Humpty's bones

massive glass of red wine while muttering, ‘Welcome to the mad house.’

Eden approached the window. The garden lay empty beneath violent skies. Thunder bellowed again, fists of sound against her ears. ‘I’m right, aren’t I, Mr Hezzle?’ She spoke with a new self-assurance. ‘The First Man is out there. Does he bring the Gift?’

Her Aunt’s voice rose. ‘We identified those bones as Homo Prima, the First Man. The deformed skull.’ She gave an odd-sounding laugh. ‘How can that be the First Man out there. He’d have to be nearly two thousand years old?’

‘The girl’s an idiot.’ Curtis’ attention was on his wine glass and he took a large gulp of the merlot.

Mr Hezzle’s wise eyes regarded Curtis with nothing less than pity. ‘You should listen to your niece, Mr Laird. She is intelligent.’ He sighed. ‘More intelligent than the pair of you put together.’

A huge crash of thunder rattled the house. On the shelf the crockery trembled. Curtis chuckled and gestured with his glass. ‘Take her to live with you, then. But be careful who she brings home for a one night stand. Her lovers have a reputation for starting fires. She’ll bed the — ’

He didn’t finish the sentence. Eden snatched the glass from his hand then dashed its contents at his head. Blood red wine streamed down his face and dripped from his nose.

‘Good work, Miss.’ Mr Hezzle nodded with approval. ‘It might wake him up enough to open his eyes properly for the first time.’

‘I’ve never hit a woman before — ’ Curtis began ominously.

‘Why don’t you make the effort to see yourself as other people do?’ Eden told him in contempt. ‘No wonder Wayne slapped you.’

‘I’m warning you!’ He screamed the words. ‘You and Hezzle have gone too far.’

Eden paused as she realised a vital truth. ‘I know what’s got into you. You aren’t angry, Curtis. You’re scared.’

‘Rubbish.’

‘You’re frightened of what’s out there.’

‘No.’

‘Listen to your niece,’ Mr Hezzle said in a low voice. ‘Like I said, she’s intelligent. She knows.’

‘Ridiculous… I’m not frightened. She knows nothing.’

Eden’s confidence grew. ‘Curtis you are frightened. Because you’ve got a secret, haven’t you?’

He looked at her, his mouth opening and closing as if he was lost for what to say next.

‘There have been times at night,’ Eden continued, ‘when the moon is shining… you’ve seen a figure moving through the fields. You watched and not told a living soul. But you saw a man. You noticed the shape of his head… it didn’t look right to you… only you didn’t tell anyone, did you?’

Curtis’s appearance was that of a hunted man. His eyes became shifty as if he searched for an escape route.

Heather stiffened, ‘Curtis, is this true?’

Eden said, ‘That’s why he doesn’t like the house; he rationalises it as Dog Lands being too far from the studio in York. And that’s why he drinks too much. He wants to sleep so soundly that he never gets up during the night to look out of the window to see what might be out there.’

Curtis swallowed and rubbed his face with his hand, smearing away the wine.

‘Listen to your niece, Mrs Laird. What she says is true.’

‘Of course it’s true,’ Eden lifted her voice above another rumble of thunder. ‘What’s made it all worse for Curtis is that I’ve given a name to the figure he’s glimpsed in the fields. The First Man. What’s more, he now has a history. He was revered by the Romans. He had a mission. Now he’s returned to complete that mission. To offer humankind the Gift. Heather, it might seem contradictory, but the fact of the matter is the bones of the First Man are in the lab, yet the First Man is out there in the garden; he’s searching for a way into the house.’

Curtis flinched, and his eyes shot to the bolted door.

Eden leaned forward to peer through the kitchen window. Winds tugged garden bushes. The gazebo that covered the pit had toppled. The storm was almost here. Another huge crash of thunder echoed around.

Heather gripped Eden’s elbow. ‘But how can this thing both be in the house as bones, and outside as a living creature?’

Eden glanced at Mr Hezzle, an invitation to supply the answer.

‘You’ve done a good job so far, Miss. You tell her.’

Eden nodded. ‘Because the First Man wasn’t a single individual. I’ve been working it out. He didn’t suffer from a deformity of the skull. He was completely normal. At least as far as his own species is concerned he was. As I say, the First Man isn’t a solitary person. There was a group of males living here on this very spot.’

‘What?’ Heather looked on the verge of fainting. Curtis plumped down onto a chair.

‘They were from a race of hominids — those ancestors of ours that were referred to as “ape men”. But they weren’t especially ape-like. They’d just evolved differently to Homo sapiens. As their numbers dwindled they interbred with the local people. Look at Mr Hezzle. The structure of his nose is different to ours. Now, other people would rudely comment that he’s got a considerable nose. But look at the shape of it. Notice his eyes. The bones beneath the eyebrows are more prominent. Yet his jaw line is extremely fine. Almost delicate. While just outside is one of the First Men.’

Heather asked in a weak voice, ‘Mr Hezzle, is this true?’

He nodded. ‘Out there is the last of his line. He can smell the bones.’ The old man turned to face the direction of the lab. ‘Something in me can, too.’ His nostrils flared as he inhaled. ‘It’s like the skeleton is calling to us… a cry through the years.’ His eyes watered. ‘In a way I can’t properly describe, I hate it. That cry is terrible… it’s full of hurting, so full it makes me hurt, too, inside… but it makes me want to answer the call.’ He regarded the three of them, his face grave. ‘Rationally, I know it’s coming from him outside. Yet he has this way of making his voice appear from other things… like from those bones. Sometimes when he calls, it comes out of the fields, out of the air, or even out of a storm like this. And he can plant ideas inside your head. Sometimes you dream his dreams. You find yourself knowing certain facts about him, about his history here over the last two thousand years or more, and you wonder how you could possibly have learnt all that information. That’s his doing again. He has the power to feed knowledge directly into your brain. How does he do this? I can’t rightly say. But he’s got some telepathic way of making you know what he knows… only it’s disordered… random… it can seem as if there’s a madness starting inside of you.’

He paused, and the first flicker of lightning lit the windows, throwing them all into stark relief before a huge clap of thunder rolled around the lowering skies.

Curtis attempted to sound like his old angry self. He picked up the two parts of the skull; the First Man’s. ‘Does it come out of these? The voices? Those fabulous airy-fairy notions!’ He banged them down onto the kitchen table.

The second he did so, a shape hurled itself from the green gloom outside to slam against the back door. Through white fragments of shattered glass, held in place by the plastic membrane, all they could make out was a shape — a dark, angry shape driven by pure rage. The door jerked on its hinges. Heather screamed. Even Mr Hezzle flinched. Frightened into submission, Curtis gasped, ‘My God,’ and with shaking hands managed to pour himself another glass of wine. The figure charged the door again. It held… just.

Eden hurried to the table.

‘He wants this!’ She picked up the sections of skull.

‘Miss, you don’t know everything about him. Even though he might have been feeding information into your head. There are dangers — ’

‘I do know that the First Men were the kindest and wisest men in the world. Your ancestors knew it; the Romans recognised them for what they were. The First Men were identified as having the entire pantheon of gods dwelling inside of them. What’s more, he’s been entrusting his knowledge to me without me ever realising it. Ever since I came here, I’ve had the strangest dreams. My mind began to work in a way that it’s never done before. I understand so much about him without being told.’ Eden smiled, her face growing rapturous. ‘Can you imagine the impact of the First Man on the human race? He can elevate humankind into a new species — one that will have a longer life… no, more than that: a better quality of life. Now, the last one is outside. He’s here to deliver the Gift’