by Tim O'Rourke
“What?” he asked, looking back over his shoulder at me, and turning the crank on the printer with his giant hands.
“Didn’t my mother and father help you produce the newspaper?” I asked him.
“That’s right,” he said, looking back at the great iron machine before him. The noise from the crank sounded like the bones of a skeleton being jangled together.
“Don’t you wish they were here now?” I asked. I knew my uncle didn’t want to talk about my parents, but I did. I couldn’t let it go – I couldn’t let them go. They were my parents and I loved them. I felt somehow lost without them.
“I guess,” he grunted, brushing a mop of sweat-soaked hair from his brow.
“When do you think they will come back?” I asked.
“Stop talking and give me a hand over here,” he said without looking back at me.
Placing the candle down onto the pile of newspapers I’d been sitting on, I got up and crossed the shack to where my uncle stood stooped over the printer. I could see sheets of off-white coloured paper appear from between two huge black drums that were coated black with sticky-looking ink. The faster Uncle Sidney turned the crank, the quicker the sheets of paper slid from between the rollers.
“Don’t just stand their gawping,” he remarked. “Collect up the sheets of paper and place them in that box at your feet.”
I looked down to see a large wooden crate. Holding out my hands, I gathered up the sheets of paper that streamed from beneath the press and placed them into the box. Each side was covered in rows and rows of typed writing. The light from the nearby candle was too dim for me to read what the tiny rows of printed words said.
And just like I had once wondered what the point had been in my father and mother chasing shadows, I looked at my uncle and said, “What is the point in working so hard to make a newspaper?”
“The people of this town have to get their news somehow, don’t they?” he said, glancing at me, then back at the printer.
“News about what?” I wondered.
“About what’s happening in England,” he said.
“And what is happening?” I asked.
“It’s not important – you’re too young to understand,” he said without glancing up at me.
“I’m nine years old,” I said, placing more sheets of the paper into the box. “I’m old enough to understand that you’re keeping something from me.”
“Like what?” His response was short – snappy.
“Like you know what has happened to my mother and father,” I said. Then without any warning, a flood of tears burst onto my cheeks in warm streaks. “I know that they went because of me…”
Slowly my uncle began to stop the crank and the printer grew to a grinding halt. Then scooping me up into his powerful arms, he hugged me tight to him. “Your mother and father didn’t leave because of anything you did,” he whispered.
“Why then?” I sobbed into his chest.
“They chose to go away,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because…” he started, then trailed off.
Easing myself back from his solid chest, I looked into his face. His usually light blue eyes looked clouded over somehow.
“They went away to find out what really happened to the werewolves and vampires,” I said.
Slowly, he nodded.
“See? It was my fault they went away,” I said, pulling free of his hold.
“How do you figure that?” he asked with a bemused frown.
“I scoffed at them for wasting their lives trying to search for her… to prove she existed…”
“Who?” my uncle broke in.
“The young woman who saved…”
As if suddenly realising who I was talking about, my uncle reached out, placing one thick finger against my lips, preventing me from saying anything more about her. “Shhh,” he whispered. Then taking my hand in his he led me from the shack and back through a pile of scattered rubble toward his house.
“What about the newspaper?” I asked him.
“It can wait until tomorrow,” he said. “I don’t know about you but I feel half-starved and tired. Let’s have some supper and then some sleep.”
At the door of his ramshackle house that he had taken as his own, I said, “So will you ever tell me where my parents have gone?”
“One day,” he said, leading me inside and closing the door behind us.
Chapter Three
Another ten years passed before my uncle told me the truth about my mother and father’s disappearance. I believe he only did so because of what I’d discovered. I spent those ten years between my parents’ disappearance and discovering the truth living in my uncle’s house and helping him to crank out his weekly newspaper. It wasn’t a newspaper as such, more like a small pamphlet. But the townsfolk of Maze faithfully brought a copy each week, and this is how my uncle made a small but comfortable living for the both of us. While he sat at his desk and wrote the articles for the paper, I would sit cross-legged before the fire and fold the sheets of printed paper together. When the electricity came on we worked in the glare of a small lamp. When the electricity went out, we worked in the dim glow of candlelight. My uncle continued with my education at home, teaching me how to better read and write. Sometimes my uncle would go away for two or three days at a time and leave me alone. It didn’t bother me much. In fact, I enjoyed having the little house to myself. I had become close to a guy named Flint. He was a night-watchman and a year older than me. Some nights when my uncle was away, Flint would come and watch over me for the night. Wrapped in his arms, I didn’t feel quite so alone. He was the first and only man I had ever slept with. I couldn’t say that I loved him, however much I loved what we did to each other during the secret nights we spent together. I didn’t know what my uncle would think of me, if he knew that Flint came to stay while he was away. The only rule my uncle laid down during his absence was that I wasn’t allowed into the shack where he kept the printing press. This he kept locked, taking the key with him wherever he went.
I had just turned nineteen, when one morning, as we sat and ate warm toast and drank sweet tea, I asked my uncle where it was he went.
Placing down his chipped cup, he looked across the table at me. “I go in search of stories,” he explained. “I seek out other towns, but more than that, I go to the places which were abandoned by humans during the war.”
“Why?” I asked.
“So I can report what happened,” he said. “It’s history – part of our history. We only ever got to this point because what of went before.”
“But I’ve read some of your reports in the newspaper and…” I trailed off.
“And what?” he asked, picking up a thick slice of toast from the cracked plate before him and taking a huge bite. Butter ran over his fingers and down the back of his hand.
“Well, how do you know what you write in your newspaper is true? You can’t be sure of any of it. None of us really know what happened to the werewolves and vampires. And besides, what you write isn’t exactly news – it’s more like history.”
“It’s news to the people who read my paper,” he said. “People are looking for answers – people need that. We need to know our history and how we got to this point. If we understand what happened in the past, it will hopefully help us to be better prepared for the future.”
“What do we need to prepare ourselves for?” I asked. I was no longer that naïve nine-year-old girl. I was nineteen – a young woman who was old enough to enjoy the comforts of a lover – and my questions could no longer be so easily pushed aside and left unanswered.
“And that’s why I go in search of answers,” he said around another mouthful of toast.
“But my mother and father went in search of answers, didn’t they?” I asked, pouring myself another cup of tea from the pot. Then glancing up at him and meeting his stare, I added, “And they never came back.”
“I come back,” he said, taking once last gulp
of tea from his cup and standing up.
“But what if one day you don’t?” I asked.
He looked hard at me. His face was unreadable.
“Can I come with you next time?” I dared to ask him.
“No,” he said with a brisk shake of his head.
“Why not? You know how long I’ve wanted to write a story for the paper. You know how much I’d like to…”
“There are enough stories in Maze to write about if you really want to contribute to the newspaper,” he said, his tone dismissive and unrelenting.
“Like what?” I scoffed back.
“What about the rising crime rate?” he said. “The night-watchmen are small in number and can’t cope. Perhaps you could get your friend Flint to give you some advice.”
How much did he know about Flint? I wondered, my cheeks flushing hot and scarlet. Did my uncle know that Flint and I had become lovers, that we had had sex in his house while he was away? Had he perhaps returned one time without me knowing? Had he heard my cries of joy? I hoped not, but how else did my uncle know about Flint and me? Wouldn’t he have said something before? Or perhaps, just as I was feeling now, my uncle had been too embarrassed to say anything. His sudden comment had knocked the wind from me and put me on the back foot. A long, drawn out silence fell between us. As it became almost unbearable, my uncle’s face broke out into a warm smile.
“I’ve got something for you.” I watched him reach into the back pocket of his jeans. From it he pulled a tattered-looking paperback. I gasped at the sight of it. I’d never had a book of my own before. Jumping to my feet, I skirted around the table toward him and the book he held in his hands. He gave it to me. The pages were yellow, dog-eared, and turned up. The spine was cracked too, but it didn’t matter. I held it carefully, like it was some kind of ancient relic – and in a strange way I knew it was. It had come from a time that had been ravaged and destroyed by beautiful immortals.
I read the title written across the front of the book: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, it read. “Where did you find it?” I asked without looking up.
“I found it amongst the rubble of some remote farmhouse that I came across the last time I went in search of news,” my uncle said.
Carefully, I opened the book. There was an inscription written in black ink on the first page, just below the title. Happy sixteenth birthday, Andrea – Love from Dad, it read.
It felt suddenly strange to be holding a book in my hands that had once been given as a birthday present to a girl named Andrea. It had now been given to me as a present, not from my father, but someone I had grown to love just as much.
“Thank you,” I breathed, looking up, only to discover that my uncle had gone. I glanced over at the kitchen window to see him heading across the rubble and the yard toward the shack.
Taking the book to my poky bedroom, I lay on the bed and read the book. I read it from cover to cover in one sitting. I couldn’t put it down. It was the first book I had ever read. I was gripped not only by the story about Heathcliff and the girl he loved named Catherine, but it gave me a glimpse into the past – into the world that used to be. And for the first time, I truly understood why my mother, father, and uncle wrote the newspaper and why all three of them had gone in search of answers. Answers could be found in books – in the words that had once been written down, just how my uncle now wrote his newspaper. Wasn’t he keeping a written record of what the world had once been and what it was now? Did it matter if he got things wrong? The book I’d been holding in my hands had been made up, but it spoke the truth, too. It told the story of love, hate, and betrayal. Of being abandoned as a small child and having to go and live someplace else. In my heart I knew how that felt. The words in the book, although fiction, also spoke a very real truth.
Carefully placing the book to one side, I left the room holding the candle I had lit while reading. I couldn’t find my uncle anywhere in the house and I wondered if he wasn’t still in the shack working on the next run of his newspaper. It had grown dark, and no sooner had I stepped outside, then my candle was snuffed out by a sudden blast of cold night air. With the candle smouldering in my fist, I stepped over the rubble and crossed the yard to the shack. I knew without opening the door that my uncle wasn’t working on the next edition of his newspaper. I couldn’t hear the clank-clank sound of the printing press spewing out those printed sheets of paper. A crescent shaped moon lit my way as I reached the door. I could hear no sound from the other side of it. Had Uncle Sidney gone off again? I tugged on the latch, and to my surprise the door swung open. I peered into the darkness.
“Uncle?” I whispered over the groaning wind blowing my hair from off my shoulders.
Wondering where my uncle was, I started to swing the door closed, then stopped. The moonlight streaming over my shoulder fell upon the newspapers piled in each corner. These were the overruns and the copies that my uncle had been unable to sell over the years. Stepping into the shack, I plucked up a box of matches from a nearby worktable and lit the candle I had brought with me from the house.
In the orange flare of light, I made my way across to one of the many piles of old newspapers. My uncle had said that he reported the news – it was his mission to keep the townsfolk of Maze up-to-date of what was happening in the world and what had once taken place. Staring at the piles of newspapers, I suddenly couldn’t help but wonder if my uncle had ever reported on my parents’ disappearance. That had once been news, hadn’t it? How could my uncle not have reported the fact that two of the reporters from the newspaper he wrote had suddenly gone missing – vanished?
But where to look? I thought, turning around and looking at the mountains of old newspapers that spanned at least the ten years I had been living with my uncle. Then, spying a pile of faded newspapers in the furthest corner of the shack, I could remember sitting there and watching my uncle work at the printing press. All the other newspapers piled high around me had been produced since that time. So the pile I had sat on as a child would surely be the place to start looking. Setting the candle to one side, I made my way amongst the newspapers. Reaching down, I shifted some of them aside and checked the dates printed in the right-hand corner on each of them. The copies I held in my hand were dated just two years after being taken in by my uncle. I lifted more from the pile, working my way down until I reached the copies that were dated the year my parents had gone missing. Finding them, and with my heart suddenly beating faster than it had ever had, I snatched several editions from the top of the pile. I thumbed through them until I found the copy that my uncle had produced the week my parents had gone missing. Placing the others aside, I read the black printed headline across the top of the front page: The People of Shade Go Missing! the headline read.
Chapter Four
“What are you doing in here?” I heard Uncle Sidney ask.
Gasping, and with the old newspaper still clutched in my hands, I spun around to face him. He stood in the open doorway of the shack, arms folded across his broad chest, milky blue moonlight falling over his shoulders. He glanced down at the newspaper I was holding.
Not wanting to be put on the back foot by him for being discovered alone in the shack, I held the newspaper up and said, “All these people went missing?”
“It was a long time ago,” he shrugged, stepping forward, his giant frame now almost blocking out the moonlight. If it hadn’t have been for the candle I had, the shack would’ve now been in total darkness. “What happened in the village of Shade isn’t important.”
“It was important enough for you to write about it,” I said. “What happened there was important enough for you to splash over the front of your newspaper.”
The wind gusted outside and the candle flame flickered, making our shadows dance across the walls of the shack. “It was a long time ago,” Uncle Sidney repeated, reaching for the paper.
I yanked it away, out of his reach. “Those people from that village went missing the same time as my parents did.” I looked hard
at him. His eyes locked with mine. He stopped dead in his tracks as if he had been punched.
“It’s just a coincidence…” he started. But I could tell he was struggling to find his words.
“Liar!” I shouted, waving the paper before him. “You told me once that my parents had gone away… that they went looking for the truth about what happened to the werewolves and vampires…”
“I never lied to you, Mila…” my uncle cut in.
“What you did was worse than lying,” I shot back, tears now brewing deep inside of me. “You just didn’t tell me anything. You let me believe for all these years that my parents went away because of me…”
“I never let you believe that,” he said, coming forward again, closing the gap between us. “I told you your parents chose to leave…”
“They went to investigate what happened in the village of Shade, didn’t they?” I shouted. “That’s where they went and they went missing like everyone else. Isn’t that really what happened to them?”
With his blue eyes cloudy and dark, my uncle stopped within hugging distance of me. Then lowering his head as if in shame, he said, “Yes. Your mother and father went to the village of Shade and never came back. They disappeared just like the others.”
“And you didn’t think of going to look for them?” I gasped in disbelief.
“What? Go missing, too?” he said, glancing up at me.
“You’re a coward,” I hissed. I felt more hurt and betrayed than angry. “You’re selfish.”
“Selfish?” he whispered, cocking his head at me.
The sudden look of hurt I could see in his eyes made my heart want to break. But I couldn’t take back what I had said, and I still felt so hurt that I wasn’t sure I even wanted to.
“I stayed because of you, Mila,” he said. “Don’t you think I wanted to go in search of my brother? But what if I had? What if I had gone missing, too? What then? Who would have looked after you? You were just a child, Mila. Do you really think I could have left you all alone?”