Humpty's bones

‘No, no way. They’re fine. Probably found a blind spot by pure chance.’ He panted; his eyes were round as coins. ‘You know something; I’m going to apply for a gun licence. Next time. Bang!’

Heather flinched at the word ‘bang’.

Perhaps it was the way his wife flinched, because the adrenalin suddenly left Curtis. He stopped moving in that animated way. His flow of excited speech abruptly halted.

In that silence that was more than silence — almost like the vibration of a bell so vast that the note it made was too low for human hearing, yet powerful enough to be picked up by some sixth sense — Eden Page knew she had an important observation that must be spoken aloud.

Eden took a deep breath. These were words that had to be clear. ‘Did either of you get a good look at the man? I didn’t properly… but wasn’t there something wrong with his head?’

6. Tuesday Morning: 6.08

How Eden did it she didn’t know. Immediately after the drama of the intruder attacking the back door she seemed so wide awake she’d never sleep. The last thing she remembered, however, was looking at the radio alarm clock beside her bed that told her the time neared one in the morning. It only seemed a moment later and she was opening her eyes to see that the clock read 6.08. A gleam of daylight edged the curtains. With the arrival of dawn the events of the previous night had the aura of nightmare, rather than reality. Once more she thought of the man who’d spoken to her on the train. You should always respect omens… beware, beware, beware… Even though she tried to not to dwell on what now seemed an ominous warning she knew it would be impossible to go back to sleep. What’s more, recollections of the figure prowling around the house returned with vivid images of the man-shaped shadow. And just what was wrong with his head?

Eden went to the window to ease back the curtain. Admittedly, a little on the tentative side. What if the strange figure stood on the lawn staring up at her as she looked out?

There, in the grey light of morning, all that met her eyes was the immensity of the landscape. No strange intruder lurked on the lawn. Her eyes were drawn to where she had seen the figure. Nothing but sodden ground.

In this part of the world the flatness emphasised the hugeness of the sky. The fields were largely featureless. This blank land: it had the sullen expression of a thug, who stares at you with that same blank insolence as they stand in a bar, while you try and ease yourself by them. Yes, they share the same air of stupidity. It’s like this drab realm could utter the same threat as the street thug. I don’t know you. You don’t interest me. I can hurt you if I want. If I can be bothered. I might. Just to break the boredom. So beware, beware, beware…

‘Talk about a lonely place,’ she murmured. ‘Why is it all so solitary looking? There’s nothing in groups.’ That misty greyness prompted her to mutter a litany. ‘I can see one house, one tree, one road, a solitary church, a single scarecrow. A lonely pony. A lonesome rabbit. An individual post box. There are no families of bushes. No happy bands of rodents. Everything, but everything, is reduced to a miserly quantity of one.’ Another fact occurred: ‘Why is everything so straight? The fields all have straight fences, the dykes are straight, the paths are straight, the hedges are straight. The only thing bent is that road.’ Her eyes followed that strange crook in the highway that meant it curled half way round the house almost like a python making a start on encircling its prey.

The Via Britannicus stretched way back into history, as much as it stretched its hard body out across a gloomy land of rectangular fields that were either brown with dirt or dull green with vegetation. This view secreted an air of foreboding. Here bloody battles had been fought for possession of this flat- as-a-table-top realm. It suggested that the human suffering it had witnessed down through the ages had left it hardened, emotionally dead, it had felt blood spilt into its ground so often that, if it could have talked, it would say with a heartless shrug. ‘Death again? So what?’ Eden remembered what grim secrets these acres of mud had occasionally yielded. An ancient pot had been found at the road’s edge that contained the cremated remnants of two people. Some bereaved Roman soldier had scratched on the pot in Latin, ‘Meam uxorem. Meum infantem. Mithras! Oro illos protegere.’ — ‘My wife; my young child. Mithras! I implore you to protect them.’ Captives were marched along the road in chains, bound either for slavery or crucifixion. Bandits hung from gibbets at crossroads as a warning to obey the law. Locals stole the bones of the hanged to magically blight the lives of rivals (at least, that was their intention). Far across austere fields, the ruins of the church became a little more distinct as the mist cleared. Savage winds that regularly tore across the plain from the cold North Sea had, years ago, robbed the building of its roof. No doubt local thieves had unburdened the House of God of its valuable lead flashing, too. A fierce infestation of ivy had defeated its walls. They had been reduced to half their original height as nature had sent vines between the carved blocks to push them apart. No families here. No friendly groupings. Not even of bricks. Mother Nature forced building blocks to become solitary stones. Another fifty years would see the earth suck what remained of the church into its uniformly moist, black dirt. Dog Lands conquered everything that came here.

As her eye followed the line of a path along a dyke she recalled her arrival yesterday. Seeing her aunt in the pit that resembled a grave. Eden fancied she could smell the soil again with its heavy odours of wet humus, peat, a lingering tang of burnt things. Strangely, it reminded her of a wine she’d once tasted that had been fermented in a stone vat in the basement of a Tuscan villa. The wine couldn’t be described as pleasant; she’d grimaced as she tasted it. So heavy, so unnaturally sweet and a powerful intoxicant. It had made her head feel unnaturally large. When she’d stumbled outside to lie down in the shade of an olive tree all the colours of the world shouted at her, bird song shrieked through her skull, her tongue writhed in her mouth as even the scent of a rose struck her nostrils with such force that it left her clutching her face. In fact, clutching hard enough to bruise her skin. Recalling the wine, which smelt so much like the soil in the pit where the bones had been found, elevated her senses again. The landscape throbbed with the most intense browns and greens… the dimensions of the scarecrow, the tree and the church ruin shifted. Time boundaries melted. For a moment she was ten years old again, stood by this very window, watching her mother running through the garden gate. Yes… her mother had been doing something… what was it now? Laughing? Screaming? Happy? Terrified? Eden could not remember or tell.

‘Eden. You’re never ever going to leave this place alive.’

The bedroom door toppled inward like a gravestone unseated from its earth. A vast, dark, unknowable shape rushed into the room. Pounced on her. Its huge mouth folded over her face. The heat of its gums seared like hot metal. As much as its teeth sinking into her cheeks was its overwhelming power to suck the air from her lungs and suffocate her. Choke her. Starve her of air.

Eden woke. For a while she lay there, letting her heartbeat return to normal. She couldn’t tell where reality had ended and the nightmare began. The only fact she did know to be concrete was this: I’ve passed the point of no return.

7. Tuesday Morning: 8.00

‘Can’t Humpty’s bones wait?’ Curtis grimaced. He needed coffee fast, but the mug he had was far too hot. Today he’d dressed in a severe black suit. His silver pony-tail dangled, incongruously bohemian against the I MEAN BUSINESS garb.

‘I need to find fragments of human skull. They simply aren’t here.’ Heather’s fingertips danced through muddy splinters of bone on the table.

‘I have to get into the studio early. I’m going to fire Wayne. He’s staggeringly incompetent.’

Eden stepped through the door into Heather’s lab.

‘Good morning,’ Curtis boomed. ‘Sleep well?’