Humpty's bones

Curtis trembled. ‘What’s she talking about?’

‘Curtis. Thousands of years ago ancient people realised that if they interbred with the species of man-like creatures known at the First Men the children produced by that union would be more intelligent, highly resistant to disease, and have much longer life-spans. They realised that together they could produce a superior breed of humans.’

Mr Hezzle waited anxiously for a moment, expecting another violent assault on the door again. When the creature didn’t return he pulled out a chair. ‘Mr Laird. Sit down, please. There are things I have to tell you. This notion of interbreeding two species goes back two thousand years. Even now it would be considered revolutionary — nay, utterly terrifying to the outside world. That’s why down through the centuries the villagers kept the existence of the First Men a secret. And that Homo sapien women were bearing the children of the First Men. Here we are, in a little Yorkshire village, creating a race of super humans simply by making love. Yes, indeed, children were born. They enjoyed long life-spans, their intelligence was higher. When bubonic plague swept the country, or there were outbreaks of cholera or smallpox those cross-bred individuals were immune. I’m one of the few remaining products of that particular experiment. I’m one hundred years old. I’ve never had so much as a common cold. And I daresay I could complete The Times crossword a sight faster than anyone here. However, we were fearful in Dog Lands. We knew that in centuries gone by the Church would have exterminated us if they discovered a new species of Man living in their midst. We’d be condemned as abominations. The Devil’s bastards. That fear also resulted in us being extremely reluctant to move out of the area. We stayed put in Dog Lands for generation after generation. Consequently, a small gene pool resulted in inbreeding, which led to such a low fertility rate that by today our brave new race of men has dwindled to half a dozen geriatrics, myself included. So you see, our great world-changing experiment has failed. And failed woefully.’

‘In that case,’ Eden said, ‘we should invite somebody else to join this debate.’ With a thrill of excitement she crossed the kitchen. ‘And he wants his kinsman’s skull.’

Eden threw the top bolt open.

Mr Hezzle flinched. ‘No, whatever you do, don’t open that door!’

The lower bolt was removed and Eden turned and looked at them, a look of triumph on her face before she raced outside into the whirl of storm winds. Thunder pounded the house. She smelt electricity in the air. A wild, savage force that promised violent death in its touch.

15. Friday Night: 9.30

Eden ran in search of the First Man, the primeval creature, who might be the last of his kind. In her hand she held the two pieces of skull. A welcome gift. Then she’d learn wisdom from the one whom the Romans called Theopolis, the city of the gods. At that instant a shadow sped through the garden gate in the direction of the dyke. The water gleamed there in the deep, straight channel like liquid metal. The colour of lead. The essence of a dull reality, waiting to be transmuted by alchemy into something higher and ineffably golden. The First Man could work a unique change on the body. He’d transform a humanity limited by its mortality and restricted intellect into men and women with minds as precious as gold.

Mr Hezzle pursued her. He shouted warnings as she raced along the side of the water-filled dyke. Yet a giddy elation gripped Eden. She couldn’t stop chasing that swift figure if she’d tried. Thoughts of miracles to come intoxicated. Marvellous possibilities whirled through her head. Excitement made her blaze within. Stars burned in her blood; anything was possible in the next five minutes. Anything. Anything. Anything…

… Eden glimpsed fish gliding through the water of the dyke. Her mind appeared to swim like those creatures through a different medium altogether. The First Father had begun to exert his own particular magic. She remembered Mr Hezzle claiming that the First Father could reach into your head. That he could pipe his own memories, his own dreams, directly into one’s unconscious mind. The water channel ran away into the distance, straight as an airport runway. Twenty feet wide, ten feet deep. Centuries ago it had been etched deep into the face of this land to drain swamp water.

‘Eden, stop!’ Mr Hezzle cried.

But she couldn’t stop. Waves of emotion rolled through her. The urge to run as fast as she could after the shadow had her in a grip so muscular she gasped with something that merged pain with ecstasy. Her thigh muscles ached, pains shot through her feet, but there was a sweetness to it. This sweet pain felt so good after confinement in her aunt’s house. This is good; this is beautiful; this is release.

Ahead, the shadow figure effortlessly sped through lush grass. It enticed her to an extraordinary destination; she knew that. Thunder clouted her ears. It shook the earth. Pregnant-looking clouds: swollen, huge, overwhelming, soon to break with waters unimaginable… how they’d sweep this flat land. A realm of fields, ditches, fences, solitary farmsteads, lonely trees, and, in the distance, the church ruin: clumps of masonry formed hunched goblin forms in the centre of the graveyard.

Eden ran faster, terrified lest the mysterious figure should slip away. If only I could see you properly… You reached out to me. You filled my mind with new worlds of thought. Now I want to look into your face… Yet the gloom of the impending storm still hid him from her. He was shadow — that’s all. Shadow, movement, a distant, half-glimpsed figure. ‘Wait… please wait… I’ve got something for you… ’ She held up the sections of skull. The thick, bony bulge of the brow above an eye socket pressed against the sensitive skin of her palm. ‘Stop.’

Emotion rolled through her with same power of the thunder now pounding the earth into submission. Longing, hope, yearning, excitement, terror, pain, exhaustion, exhilaration — each one vied for supremacy within her; each one triumphing for domination of her soul before being usurped in a near instant. Hope, terror, longing, dread, elation: they pulsed. The flow of sensations made her dizzy. At times she wondered if she’d fallen into a strange kind of sleep as she ran. The dimensions of the world were shifting. Grass blades swelled beneath her running feet. They expanded until they were as thick and as green as cucumbers. The clouds seemed to reach down to run cold fingers through her hair; she felt their icy touch on her scalp. The figure in front of her grew elongated… now it seemed a hundred feet tall. Odd lights burned in its limbs. As if within that body it contained stars won from the heavens. Fragments of memory skittered through her. For a moment, it seemed none of this had ever happened. Eden Page rode the train again, the smell of the fire at home still in her nostrils. When could the builder start work? Would the insurance payout cover the cost of the entire kitchen? The turbaned man in the carriage solemnly intoned, You should always respect omens… beware, beware, beware… Then she was up to her shoulders in the pit in her aunt’s garden. Scooping out bowls of mud. She stood in the grave of one of those creatures. Molecules of decayed flesh, mixed with fertile mud, stuck to her bare hands. Strong odours of burning, wet soil, damp grass, old wine… And that’s when the alchemy occurred. Nothing less than revelation blazed through the fibres of her being. Her old life, the job in the student lettings office, the apartment in a drab quarter of town, the sequence of fleeting love affairs, and the unfulfilling routines of the past were all meaningless. Quite frankly — all of it bloody pointless. Being here at this moment in time — that’s what was important. Because being here in this muddy stretch of rural England went beyond the profound, the monumental and the momentous. Simply, she was poised to be present at the birth of a new world. A time as pivotal as when a primordial ape-creature struck two stones together to make fire. Or uttered the first word of rational speech.

Eden Page vaulted over a fence. The water in the dyke was rising up. Soon it would overflow. Would those lead-hued waters engulf her? Was her destiny to drown here? No she mustn’t let that happen. Already her life had become woven with that of the individual she now so desperately followed.

Mr Hezzle’s words came to her from when he spoke about the First Man in the kitchen just minutes ago: ‘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.’

These waves of emotion… the way the world around her had become distorted… how grass stems became plump and bloated… how far off things became near: the ruined church lay a mile away yet she saw its ruins suddenly magnified; the mad profusion of ivy that penetrated cracks in the stones; she saw graves… the hardened