Читать книгу The Boy In The Cemetery - Sebastian Gregory - Страница 8

Chapter One

This is the story of a boy who was dead but could not die.

And a girl who lived but was not alive.

There was a name that caused fear and missed heartbeats to those unfortunate enough to hear it spoken. A name so suited to the disease that the words themselves described the symptoms and the purpose in a terrible dark perfection. So afraid were the people of the city that they dare not speak of it, for fear of in some way drawing the attention and wrath of the thing itself. It was called The Consumption and like an ominous descending fog it choked the life of anyone unfortunate enough to be caught within its wisps. The cruellest of diseases, The Consumption would take every last drop of life as it turned a once recognisable, living person into something far less. A mere blood stained whisper of humanity’s l memory. To its victims, The Consumption was devastating; to those who watched their loved ones waste away to a dry husk, more so.

First there is the cough, subtle at first, small as a tickle. But the tickle soon becomes an itch, an itch that comes from the lungs and so cannot be scratched. There is no relief as the choking and choking and choking grips the windpipes and begins to slowly, oh so very slowly, drown them in their own blood. Drip, drip the lungs begin to fill; drip, drip the lips splutter and spill. The Consumption can take its own time and savour the misery wrought; after all there is no cure and it is, at the point of bloody coughs, firmly rooted within the body. Now is the time for the sweating to begin as the body temperature rises and sweat pours forming puddles around the lost desiccated soul. As the body shakes and rattles, the sweats run. Now he Consumption really earns its name, leaching all that it is to be human, slurping the mind of sanity, and petrifying the body to bone. All that is left for death to usher into the next world is a withered, mindless thing. And this is exactly what happened to the boy’s mother.

They lived in a one-roomed hovel, the boy his mother and an unknown number of skittering cockroaches, by the city docks. It was always dark inside no matter the time of day. What little light fought for survival against the dank dark was provided by small brown wax candles that produced a smaller brown flickering light. Slivers of sunlight penetrated the cracks in the rotting wood door, but soon became lost in the gloom. They brought a damp stench and clung to the air and wet the lungs and offended the nostrils. There were no beds—only two dirty grey uncomfortable mattresses made from stitched sacks and straw, placed on the cobbled stone floor. One for his mother and sometimes his father—if truth is told, the father was rarely seen and spent most of his time pissing at the gin shops. The other mattress belonged to the boy. They slept in ragged sheets that wouldn’t keep a small rat in bedding. The boy barely noticed his father and was not even truly aware of him until his mother was in the cold grip of The Consumption. In his memories, the mother’s smile lit up the dark; she was soft and warm despite the harsh cold world. Her hair was red curls, wild, that tickled his nose whenever she cleaned his face with kisses. She would sing to him at night, sweet angel songs as she sat in front of a cracked mirror putting on her coal soot make-up.

“Mummy has to go out, my lovely boy.” She looked so beautiful, smiling before him and her voice a comforting whisper. “But when the morning comes, I will have enough money to take you to breakfast.” The boy’s mouth practically drooled at the thought. She kissed him and that night he dreamt of sausages and oranges and treats to come.

The next day the boy woke with his mother sitting over him.

“Get up, sleepy head; I owe you breakfast.” She beamed.

The boy was out his makeshift bed and holding her faster than a dying eye can flicker. They laughed and the boy dressed into his one and only set of clothes. An itchy and thick woollen suit and heavy leather shoes Mum had bought from a boy who no longer needed them. His mother wore the same outfit from the night before and although she looked a little dishevelled and smelt of smoke and gin, she was still beautiful. Soon out in the sun they walked to the market. Mother held her son’s hand tightly as people barged by, hurrying and not watching where they were going. The noise was incredible to the boy, as stall vendors called their wares to the world. The boy felt dizzy with happiness as his senses where overwhelmed. The air smelt warm and exotic, the noise intoxicating, the sights inviting as they passed brightly coloured stands selling all manner of fancy goods. She bought two hot sausages and the boy nearly swallowed his whole, burning his lips. But the pain was nothing to the satisfaction of having something warm in his belly. His mother laughed at him and gave him another sausage, which disappeared as fast as the first. They walked to the hill that overlooked the city. The buildings steamed and shimmered with chimney smoke in the hot sun. As they strolled past green trees and upon the carpet of grass, something they had done many times, Mother stopped suddenly, gasping for breath. The boy panicked by her side as she fell to the ground, landing on her back in the green grass. She looked pale even beneath her make-up. The boy shook her as best he could with his small arms; there was no one around to help.

“Mum, Mum, wake up please,” he pleaded.

She must have heard his cries, for moments after falling she opened her eyes to her son.

“I was resting, boy.” She smiled. “Can’t I rest?”

The boy held on to her, burying his head in her chest, not seeing the trickle of crimson from her mouth’s corner. The mother, however, knew it was there as certain as she knew what was happening deep inside her vulnerable flesh.

The death of his beloved mother began slowly, and with all the efficiency of a leech attached to an exposed vein. The boy’s world was not taken from him in a swift act of violence but rather a fading from the inside and outwards. The illness took her strength until, when she was at her most vulnerable, it took her soul. Without fresh water or any type of medicine she soon became bedridden. Weak, she could barely speak without the trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth or wet, red chokes denying her breath Her pale skin the colour of curdled milk and just as soaking wet as she perspired her life away. The change was subtle at first: the odd cough there, the unsure strength of weak knees.

“What is wrong, mummy?” the boy would ask.

“Nothing.” The mother would smile, hiding the red spots on the handkerchief from his view. But when the boy crept closer, the mother held him more and more at arm’s length. Until one day she was too weak to even muster the effort for that. For hours he lay upon her, huddled, thirsty and starving in the dark but unwilling to leave her side. Her breathing was gasping and her body felt as brittle as twigs, but still the boy would not leave her. Finally after untold hours, the mother stirred and opened her eyes for the first time in a long, long time.

“Where is Father? Where is he? We need to get you help,” the boy said; his voice was a dry whisper so as not to hurt his mother with heavy words.

“We do not need him, son, and never have,” she replied so distantly, lost in a memory of what was, and when she spoke of him sadness overshadowed her otherwise defiant words. “Come,” she added between deep gasps. “Let us be out of here; you have to be strong and help me.”

The sun was warm on the boy’s face as he held his mother in the outside world.For one fleeting moment as the smells and sounds of the city washed over him, everything was good and familiar. The shouting of the boat workers on the bank of the river as huge steam ships came down from faraway places. The smells of the river, a cocktail of heat and rain with a measure of rotten fish from the market. There was the laughter and fighting from the gin houses that lined this part of the city as sailors came and went and ladies with thick make-up greeted them with drunken smiles… The mother held on to her son tightly, and each step was an achievement for both the mother whose life was slipping and for the young boy holding her upright. They half walked half stumbled across the cobbled street. A horse and carriage trotted by dropping steaming manure behind it. A few of the homeless children followed collecting the stinking piles into sacks. The boy knew a life of poverty; he shared a bed with lice and at many times had taken dark water from a burst pipe. However, his mother had always kept him sheltered and safe. Even from his own father, who once came stumbling into the hovel angry that his mother had no coin for him to liberate.

Like a shadow of a beast, he pointed, looming over the boy, slurring words through a foul breath.

“What about him? Get him to the sweep. What about it, boy? You’ll climb a chimney for us, won’t you boy?” He swayed over his child, but before his giant hands could grab him, his mother stood between them.

“He’s five and if you go anywhere near him, I’ll see you floating in that black river out there, feeding the rats.”

He grabbed his son by the arm with such force that socket and bone were very nearly separated. The pain and shock was such that the boy could only yelp at being dragged along. The mother went after the monster in an attempt to save her child but her breath betrayed her as she violently spiralled into a coughing fit, collapsing on the floor, gasping as if she had woken to find herself buried alive. The boy cried for his mother but too late; he was dragged into the street, finding himself slapped across his head by his father’s huge palm. As the pain shook him senseless and his vision fired purple sparks, his father threw him over his shoulders where the boy flopped like a fresh corpse. He bounced along the cobbled streets. The sun seemed violently radiant and the boy’s ears rang a hum. The boy was brought to a street of houses in the darker side of town, but still with a higher standard of living than the boy and his mother had to endure.

“I want to go home,” the boy spluttered against nausea as his father set him down on the street. He wobbled and sat in the dirt.

“Shut up, boy; time you earned your keep, be a man,” his father snarled back.

The street was full of houses crushing together, with red brick and grey slate roofs overhead. There was a ruckus coming from one of the houses as a man dressed in a dark top hat and thick fur coat strode from a doorway. A woman’s voice cursed from the door he left. The boy’s father removed his cloth cap and held it his hands. The bald head underneath was a map of scar tissue from many a year of altercations. He approached the fur-coated man. The boy considered that this is what Satan would possibly look like had he decided to walk the earth in a man’s skin. All dressed in black with mean sharp features from the shadow of the top hat.

“Mr Cutlass,” his father said all of a sudden in a soft tone.

“Go away; I’m busy,” Cutlass replied. His voice sounded like a razor blade wetting a throat. The woman came to the door, shouting. She was not well to do but had money. Her red dress and blouse looked like lace and her dark hair was well kept in a tight bun. But her make-up was running and covered in soot. Her voice was a faux accent of what she considered proper English. “You, sir, owe me a new chimney.”

Cutlass waved at her in a dismissive stroke of air. The boy’s father blocked his path.

“Mr Cutlass.”

“What?? What??” he shouted.

“I’ve brought my boy here; he wants to be a sweep.”

“He does? I doubt it. None of those bastards crawl up that fireplace and into the dust willingly,” Cutlass noted as he eyed the boy. “It just so happens I have an opening now; we’ve had to dig a dead one out.”

From the doorway the woman was screaming about her destroyed chimney, while a large thug carried a young boy in his arms. They were both black as coal, but the boy flopped lifelessly in the big man’s arms.

Despite his size, his father appeared deflated as the dead urchin was brought from the house. “Let’s go home, son,” he said. From that day on he never asked anything from the boy or his mother again. The boy did not lose the memory for a time. He slept and would open his eyes and find himself in the black-dust stone of a chimney stack. He couldn’t move no matter how he shook; his arms were pinned by his side and numb. The only feeling in him was fear, squeezing his nerves in its skeletal grip. When he tried to scream his mouth filled with the dust, drying his saliva so he couldn’t spit before it filled his throat.

“Don’t worry,” a sweet voice said. “You are not alone. You will never be alone here.”

And the boy looked up the stack to see the dead boy hanging there, neck broken and eyes white as milk. Naturally he would wake at this point, never wanting to sleep again.

At the edge of the river, on the stone cobble bank, the mother managed, slowly and with great effort, to crouch in front and level with her son.

As she smiled her thin smile, the river lapped behind her.

“My angel,” she said. “You are the most wonderful thing I have ever done in my life. My angel, there are no words for how much I love you. You are so strong and brave. You need to be strong and brave.” Tears ran from her bloodshot eyes and turned to dust on her cheeks. Such was the strength of The Consumption.

“Now close your eyes,” she said as she stroked his hair and without hesitation he did. Her hand trembled over his cheek and the boy breathed the happiest sigh in the world, as he inhaled her never-ending scent and beauty.

When he opened them again his mother was gone and somewhere there was screaming and crowding and shouting and he was knocked to the stone as people ran to the edge of the water…