The Man Who Built the World

by Chris Ward

  Ian looked up. Red was looking towards the window. Darkness had fallen outside; the outside light of the house cast a glow across the courtyard, pushing the night back from the window. Red looked back, and an unspoken agreement passed between them.

  Time to go.

  Red stood up. ‘Come on, Ian,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a visit to make. Whatever happened in the past has gone now. We’ve got something to do, now, here.’

  Ian nodded. He felt as weary as Atlas holding up the world. ‘Okay,’ he said, but his voice was hollow, his fight gone.

  ###

  Bethany’s Diary, June 20th, 1990

  A funny thing happened today. Well, didn’t really happen, more something that was. Something I found.

  I came out of my room, and lying on the floor outside of my door, was a notepad, not dissimilar to those I’d used for my diaries before. Some sort of apology from my dad perhaps, I think. I was touched, a little I guess, but the whole episode is still so fresh in my mind that I can’t begin to consider forgiveness, not just yet. Maybe in a few more days, perhaps weeks, even. I don’t think he really understands just what he’s taken away.

  My memories were in those books. My past, my memories of Mother. He threw my diaries in the fire, and might as well have thrown Mother in with them. It is just too much to contemplate right now.

  I was young then, I didn’t understand much about anything. I have memories of her face when I was really young, leaning over where I lay, eyes like pools of gold watching me. Mother. But since then, very little.

  I don’t remember her getting sick, don’t remember how she died. Not until she told me.

  I think at first she was as scared as I was to speak, but once we both realised it would be okay, it got easier. Those first words were the hardest, but once I got used to it, it wasn’t so hard. Not so hard at all, and we talked as if we’d never been apart.

  9

  Her face filled his vision from periphery to periphery, a blurred mess of grey cracks and crannies, claw marks and dried spots of blood. Which, he realised from somewhere, wasn’t actually her face at all, but the wall against which he had slumped, the wall against which, many years ago, her scabbed and blistered fingers had scrabbled in a desperate attempt to escape from the bedroom that had become her prison.

  No, he wasn’t looking at her, because Mother was sitting over on the bed.

  He heard a whimpering sound emitting from a source within the room, filling it with a cold trickling presence like running water, which then evaporated to fill the air like a fine mist. It came from his own throat, tight and parched from sleep and drink, cracked like the walls.

  ‘Mummy . . .’

  He heard her shuffling on the bed, heard her twisted feet stretching towards the floor, searching for purchase. Could hear the creaks as her bent and deformed back stretched itself to lift her off the bed.

  The clacking of crab claws as she hobbled her way across the wooden floor spoke to him in some dark Morse Code.

  Thud! Ccckkk . . . Thud! Ccckkk . . . Thud!

  She limped towards him, one leg dragging across the floor. Once he thought it caught on a nail, heard what he thought was a cry of pain (though that might have come from him) and then the thud, ccckkk continued.

  And still he didn’t look up.

  In the shiny gloss of the untouched paint near the base of the wall, he saw the movement of shadows, growing larger as she approached him.

  He could hear her breathing, a wheezing rasp like wind through a sieve. The rattle of old bones, as though her dried, brittle skin were just a cloth thrown over them.

  ‘No no rag and bone,’ he muttered.

  Thud ccckkk flicker flicker –

  ‘No no rag and bone.’

  ‘Come here, Matty.’ Her voice was like the sound of tatty newspaper, caught on a fence and flapping about in the wind. ‘Come give Mummy hugs.’

  ‘Mummy?’ His eyes filled with tears as his head swung up. He turned towards the window, refusing to look at the shape hunched to his left, an amorphous smudge at the edge of his vision.

  ‘Come give Mummy hugs, Matty.’

  He saw the shape of his own reflection, a black silhouette sat in a black room against a black background, saw the shapes of the things around him, the walls, the door the bed, the – what the hell is that? – all outlined in black. The lines wavered as though alive, a writhing nest of snakes made from shadow, shifting in and out of focus.

  And then he sees a shadow deeper than night beside him, hunched and irregular, not man-shaped, not woman-shaped not shaped –

  he sees his own mouth form slurred words

  (come give Mummy hugs, Matty)

  hears tissue paper rustling in his throat

  feels arms fall around his shoulders

  (no no rag and bone)

  cold like dead tree bark

  but can no longer see

  can’t see

  can’t

  see –

  ‘Come to Mummy, Matty –’

  From out there in the darkness, out beyond the window and the amorphous shapes and the blurred eyes and the twisted limbs like crippled desert trees, out there in the darkness where the rain sheets and the wind roars, the crashing, rolling, cacophony of the fighting, colliding tree branches form words and call his name –

  ‘Matty –’

  He pushes himself up on to legs turned to wood, waits for his puppeteer to lend a God–like hand, then when none comes he lurches forward, legs suddenly jellified, unsteady, arms useless to protect him as he stumbles a few more feet then begins a deadly tumble forward towards the black wall of glass. He sees the shape clearly for the first time in the second before he crashes through the window, and its cruel face seems to be taunting him, egging him on further as he falls over the window ledge into the darkness beyond, the ground and darkness rushing up to meet him, the violent chatter of smashing glass cutting through the night.

  He cries out one more time as voices in the darkness begin to wail all around him and then he lands in something soft but solid, his father’s fruit bushes, grown up in the years he’s been gone, cushioning but agonising, and even as he feels hurt surge through him, he finds his feet and turns, searching for the voice that summoned him.

  There, at the edge of the forest. Waiting, beckoning. Just shadows in the mottled darkness beneath the trees, but he knows the voice has come from what waits there. There is nowhere else. The thing in his mother’s bedroom is gone, if indeed it were ever there. Now that thing waits for him, somewhere out there among the night, the low hung veil of mist and the watching trees.

  And it calls him.

  Like a derailed train, Matthew lurches off across the garden, stumbling away blindly into the night.

  ###

  Bethany’s Diary, October 28th, 1990

  I’m sorry I’ve been neglecting you. I just live in fear that he’ll find you, you see? And now I’ve got mother to talk to, I don’t need this anymore. It doesn’t seem as important.

  Mother has helped me, and I understand now. At least, I understand a lot of things.

  We talk for hours sometimes, out in the forest. I go out mainly at night, for father spends a lot of his time drunk with Uncle Red in the kitchen. Mostly we talk about nothing, about the woods, about the trees. But sometimes we talk about things that matter to us, about people, about ourselves.

  Mother is so sad. She misses Father so much, but cannot go to him no matter how much she might want to. I asked her why not, because I can see her, but she just shook her head, caught in a deep sadness, I thought. Only certain people can see her, she said. She still talks to me like a small child, and although it makes me angry sometimes, I let her for the time being simply because I love her, and sometimes I don’t feel anyone else besides her loves me.

  One thing she did say to me, though, which makes me sad, but also makes me wonder about a lot of stuff too, was that I must never talk to anyone else. Not ever. Otherwise she would go away, and I’d
never see her again.

  Mother stays away from the house, if she can. She used to come right up to my window, but I think now she has got used to being dead, she doesn’t like to. At first she got confused, and came looking for someone, anyone, who might help her, but now she seems at ease with herself, and talks to me because she wants to, rather than because she needs to. She has found other people to talk to, but she won’t tell me who they are. It doesn’t matter, she says. I think she just wants me to know that she comes to me through choice because she loves me, not just because she is lonely.

  Sometimes when I think of her words I start to cry.

  I understand a lot of things now. Mother got sick and died, and although her death was because of Father, she doesn’t want me to blame him. It was not his fault, she says, he doesn’t deserve your blame, your anger. I would have died soon anyway, he probably saved me from so much pain. Don’t hate him.

  So I try not to. He got enough hate from Matty. He got all of Matty’s hate.

  Father and Uncle Red don’t think I know about that. They think I don’t know that it was Matty who beat Father, and that was why Matty ran away. They don’t think I know about those spooky sisters either, the ones from up on the moors who made Father better. Personally I think Mother is talking about them when she mentions her other friends, though she never says. It’s just that whenever I think of them, I think of Mother, too, as though they’re somehow connected. As though there’s an invisible piece of string that ties them all together. I think perhaps it’s tied to me too, because I can see her, but I don’t know. It scares me, thinking of us all tied together, like flies caught in a spider’s web. I don’t want anything to do with them because they frighten me, but I think that one day I might have no choice.

  Dad and Uncle Red just try and brush it all away, forget about it. They think I know so little, think I’m so ignorant just because I’m young.

  I’m not blind, for heaven’s sake.

  10

  As the truck rumbled across the courtyard, Red glanced at the side view mirror, seeing once more the house he had often considered home. More so perhaps than his own cottage on the village’s outskirts, he had spent the majority of his meaningful time there. In that Gothic mansion, amongst those dark corridors, was the room where he had lain with Bethany the first time.

  The only time.

  Afterwards she had seemed distant, as though it were too much to understand for one so seemingly innocent and unawares. He had reassured her, and had understood from her expression that it would be only a matter of time before she adjusted to her adulthood, closed the door on adolescence forever and came to be with him.

  It had been enough to get her with child, of course, and he had assumed the baby would make things okay for her, for them.

  But it was never to be.

  His heart felt broken open as he looked up at those windows in the side view, wondering which one had been Bethany’s room.

  Only the second time in his life he had felt true pleasure.

  The other –

  He frowned, noticing some kind of irregular glint of light high up on the building, a window on the fourth floor. Part shadow, part knives of sharp colour, reflecting from the large exterior wall lights.

  A smashed window.

  Huh, so there you are, Matthew, he thought, but said nothing to Ian. Oh well.

  The window swung out of sight as the truck began the bumpy trek down towards the village. Red looked ahead of him, memories and thoughts of Matthew leaving his mind. He had to focus on what was coming. He dropped his eyes from the mirror, from the last fading lights of the house he wondered if he would ever see again.

  Ian, beside him, saw nothing, his eyes fixed on the road and his concentration on their destination. Red didn’t care to tell him; whatever had just happened back at the house to break that window was no longer his concern. He didn’t care if it had something to do with Matthew or not. His future, and at least part of his own concentration, also rested on what lay ahead.

  They would look for Matt again later if necessary, but what mattered now was Red’s baby. Ian might be thinking more of his son than of his stillborn grandson, but to Red, Jack was the only thing that mattered. He didn’t care if Matt’s broken body lay at the foot of that four–floor drop. He didn’t care at all whether Matt lived or died, for in Red’s mind Matthew had caused all this.

  But before you go, thanks, for the clue.

  Those fucking evil witches must have laid some sort of bewitchment over Ian and himself. Red had seen the body of his stillborn son, and the image had seared itself into his mind, one he would never forget. That poor, tiny little thing. The sisters had taken Jack away to a coroner, allowed Ian and Red to stay with Bethany, whose face had become blank once more, and never again showed any hint of emotion.

  Bethany had refused to see her baby again. The sisters had seen to his cremation, and Red himself had scattered his son’s ashes in the churchyard. Only a plaque on the churchyard wall held his memory now, the short inscription:

  Jack

  Your brief light

  will always shine

  in our hearts

  The sisters, it all came back to them. In a moment that should have been joyous those two witches had cast their dark spells and destroyed Red’s life forever. In their hour of darkness, Red, Ian and Bethany had let the Meredith sisters into their lives and trusted them.

  It made perfect sense.

  You’ve got him, haven’t you? You’ve got Jack. Bethany’s baby.

  My baby.

  Why, was anyone’s guess.

  Red glanced across at Ian. Even in the darkness of the truck’s cab, with Ian’s face just dark contours and his eyes glittering sporadically as they caught the reflections of puddles ahead on the lane, Red could see the stoic set to his face. Ian had a chance to take something back, take something back for himself when all these years he had done nothing but give.

  Red felt a sudden pang of hatred toward his friend, a violent lurch in his heart that pained as much as angered him, as though he had committed a sudden betrayal by allowing these thoughts to enter his head. Because it was not Matt, but Ian who had caused all this, wasn’t it? He had killed Gabrielle. In turn Matt had struck down Ian, and the Meredith sisters had used what dark, secret abilities they possessed to return Ian to health.

  They had healed him, but he had owed them in return. Hadn’t Ian always said how he owed them a life debt, that somehow, someday, he had to repay them?

  Some part of him would one day become theirs.

  A grandson.

  Red’s fingers tightened around the barrel of the shotgun that rested on his lap. He had made sure the safety catch was on, but even so the barrel faced out towards the car window. He didn’t want to set it off by accident.

  Didn’t want to waste any shots.

  Ian, ever the diplomat, had suggested they talk first with the Meredith sisters, and only get heavy if that got them nowhere, but Red had other ideas. He had let Ian think he was playing along, but the first chance he got those bitches would get a bloody hole right through their pretty little skulls. Talk properly first. Then we’ll talk how Ian wants to talk.

  He didn’t want them bewitching him like before. He didn’t want their black magic cast over him. He would blow the fucking whores away before they had a chance to look him in the eye. And then he would take back his son.

  #

  Ian kept his eyes on the road, not really because he needed to, having driven these roads a thousand times, but because he wanted to avoid the smoldering eyes of the man beside him. He could hear a spongy, sticky sound as Red’s sweating fingers peeled on and off of the shotgun barrel, nervously twitching, waiting for his chance to go trigger crazy.

  Whatever state Matt now found himself in, Ian doubted he could feel the same degree of anger that now poured from Red like blood from an arterial wound. Red seethed, and Ian knew he would have to think fast to prevent real bloodshed from happenin
g very soon.

  Whether they were right or not about the Meredith sisters taking Jack, Red had gone beyond reasoning. Red had a mean streak, an explosive temper, and Ian suspected he really would shoot first, talk later. Anyone could talk strong words. Ian didn’t want to test Red’s by putting himself in the firing line. He began to doubt just how stable Red’s state of mind was at present; after the last few weeks Red could be forgiven for slipping over the edge, for slightly losing his mind.

  As long as no one else got hurt because of it.

  Ian himself didn’t like to think about the night of Jack’s birth. He had seen what Red had seen, too. The image was etched on his mind. If indeed the sisters had somehow hidden the baby’s death from them, it was a terrible thing.

  Ian shook his head. He just didn’t want to see any more bloodshed. His family’s name wallowed in enough blood already.

  There had to be more. There was always more. Bethany had been half Gabrielle after all. Surely she would have said something, would have known what the sisters were planning? She couldn’t have stayed silent while someone took her baby away.

  Always more.

  Red and Ian had always believed that Jack’s death had toppled Bethany, finished her off, sent her looking for the pills that took her away from them. Ian knew Red didn’t just consider his baby stolen, but his wife murdered.

  Ian understood a lot of things. More with each passing second. There was a reason for Bethany’s suicide, a reason for Red’s murderous rage. But what about the sisters? Why would they steal Red’s baby?

  Those words again, drifting hauntingly: always more.

  He knew the village rumours about them. Not merely sisters, but lovers, also. If it hadn’t been for Gabrielle, there was no doubt he would have lusted after them the same as the rest of the men from the village. Many a brave suitor had walked up to those doors and begged for a single drink, a single dinner date. Incestuous lesbian lovers, so the rumour went, unable to have children of their own because of their chosen sexual orientation.