the corner and gripped the boy, holding him in the air. The darkest of things holding the boy was at one time a man. That same-said time had ravaged the creature of its flesh. Clearly it was dead, yet it stood straight holding the boy; its eyes had long gone, but it stared at the boy through empty sockets. The sight before the boy was so far beyond the world he knew, that all fear was replaced with awe.
The dead man moved with the grace of dried twigs and leaves. It was barefooted and dressed in shredded rags. It was bald save for a few strands. When it spoke it sounded like urn ashes blowing on a storm.
“Boy? Why you here, boy?” it asked. The boy answered clear and true; he had no fear of this ragged beast. He had seen the death of a loved one and the death a hated parent. There were no horrors in the entire world or the next that could compare.
“I came for your secrets; the dead have no need of such things,” he said with defiance.
“Don’t we? Do I look dead to you, boy?”
“Yes, although this is not a true death. I have seen a true death.”
The dead creature laughed a rotten laugh, its breath a rancid stench. It slowly lowered the boy to his feet, before kneeling with a creak before him.
“Are you not scared, boy?” it asked.
The boy wondered if he should be and searched his inner soul for even a hint, curious he felt no fear at all.
“No, I feel nothing.”
“Why?” the dead man wanted to know.
“I have lost everything. There is nothing more that would cause me more upset.”
“How?” the creature wished to know.
“The Consumption took my mother’s mind and I watched as the river took her body. My father taught me how to search for the dead’s treasures. But I found only an undead thing. Like my father’s life, his teachings amounted to naught.”
The dead man pondered the reply. Its fleshless face wrinkled as if trying to understand. The dead man seemed to reach a decision. And it spoke. “Are you alone, boy?”
“Yes.”
“And you want my secrets, boy? Do you truly want my secrets and will you accept them as they are?”
“Yes,” the boy replied without hesitation.
“Then take them, boy; I have been this way for more years than there are worms in the ground. It is time to finally rest.”
And the dead man opened its mouth so wide its jaws snapped and from the maw came a green gas. It found the boy and entered his mouth and nostrils and eyes. The boy tried to cough but the gas found its way deeper into his lungs. And when the boy’s eyes stopped watering, the dead man had gone, replaced by rags decomposing on the tomb floor. The boy, to his dismay, realised no breath left his lips or heart pumped in his chest. He looked at his thin pale arms and the veins had turned black. For now they held the secrets of the dead. All that was left to do for the boy was to scream and scream and scream.
The sky was a miserable overcast grey of obese clouds and depressed rain. Carrie Anne knew exactly how it felt. She sat in the back seat of the car, staring through a window that all the rain in the world seemed to be pelting. Her reflection, broken by the rain giving her face a melted look, stared back with bored and uninterested eyes. Her hair was long and blonde or so she always hoped it would be. Instead staring back at her was a sad face with lank hair that fell over her dark eyes and gaunt face. Her head rocked slightly as it lay on the headrest and in time with movement of the car, no, no, no, no, no, no, over and over again. She hardly recognised the reflection that looked back. She didn’t want to be that person; she didn’t want that life. She was twelve years old but felt a lot older in an unreal way as if time had aged her beyond any human means and now she was trapped in an emotional limbo, too young to understand herself as yet and too old to change. The rain tapped the car with the sound and force of a thousand pebbles; she felt the weather echoed her mood and Carrie Anne wondered if the sun even existed any more. Her father swearing at another driver broke her thoughts.
“David! There is no need for that.” Carrie Anne’s mother squealed in surprise at the string of expletives that had left her father’s mouth.
“Oh really, Lucy? Did you see that idiot? He nearly drove me off the road.” The rain was so thick that the constant swishes of the wiper blades were making it difficult to see the motorway roaring around them, never mind a driver intent on killing them. If they had been run from the road, Carrie Anne doubted she would even care.
She looked at her parents and inwardly felt a wave of sinking from her stomach. Her father sat driving, gripping on to the steering wheel and leaning hunched, as if he was trying to squeeze his face against the windscreen. His hair was dark and greasy and slicked back on his balding head. His hair looked like it was holding on for dear life before time took more of it. However, he did have a dark beard as fairly recently he had taken to not shaving, as this made up for his retreating hair line. Her father always had a permanent scowl. He was always angry with the world and any chance to vent was taken at every opportunity. For as long as Carrie Anne could remember her father had been disappointed. Sometime before she was born her father had an accident at his job as factory supervisor (what the factory made or what he supervised she didn’t know) but since then Carrie Anne knew two things about her father. The money settlement meant he would never have to work again and couldn’t thanks to his twisted spine that made him limp. And his life disappointed him and now he was never satisfied. He had been that way even before his accident that permanently took his ability to work. Carrie Anne suspected he was waiting for the favour the world owed him. Of course there was the other side to her father that she dared not dwell on, a secret side that although hidden was always in her thoughts and followed her as an overbearing shadow. No one knew of its existence except the three in the car.
All daddies do this, it means I love you, it’s OK mummy said it was OK, but it’s a game and we can never talk about it to anyone, you understand? Good girl, good girl.
Too late now, she had thought on it and her skin crawled and panic began to deepen her breath. The familiar feeling of being trapped and needing to suddenly run made her nerves prickle. She concentrated on her mother to distract herself. Her mother was extremely thin and her skin was mapped with deep blue veins. Carrie Anne’s mother had a presence of denial about her. It was in her shuffle walk, her drooping shoulders and her dark ringed eye sockets. It soaked from her skull to her hair, which was a weave of long split ends. Despite her mother’s total inability to face reality, Carrie Anne loved her; she just wished she was different, stronger and able to think for herself rather than be told what reality was. She was too influenced by her husband, but Carrie Anne didn’t hate her for it. She knew that for her mother the truth must be too horrible to comprehend. Even when she caught him sneaking from her room. Had she always known?
Carrie Anne sat on her bed and pulled the covers around her ears to block out the sound of the shouting. There was screaming and accusations and crying. No one came to see if Carrie Anne was OK.
This is your fault; this is entirely your fault. You hurt your parents. This is your fault.
“Mum, say something.”
“How long has he done this?” The words came as easy as speaking with a mouth full of nettles.
