Humpty's Bones (9 page)

‘But where does he live? Somebody cares for him, surely?’

‘He keeps to the fields, sleeps in ditches; often he can’t be found at all. There are some of us who think he goes underground into tunnels. We don’t know where, though. Nobody’s found so much as a cave round here.’

‘How many know about the First Man?’

‘Apart from one or two old folks in the village just us - the Hezzles.’

‘So you’re his keeper?’

‘If you want to put it like that. Miss, please go home. The lightning’s getting closer. You don’t know how dangerous it is to be exposed like this.’ As if to illustrate the point, the storm delivered a lightning bolt that shattered a tree at the other side of the dyke. The branches burst into flame.

‘So what now? If you know the secret of the Gift. When are you going to share it with humanity?’

‘I’m sorry, Miss. I can’t stay here. It’s not just me I’m frightened for. I’m probably the only one who can stop him breaking into the world out there.’ Mr Hezzle flung his arm out as if to encompass Britain’s cities, and beyond. ‘He doesn’t know right from wrong anymore. When he gets angry he hurts people.’

‘Then you should tell the world about him. He’ll help us all become better people.’

However, the old man turned and hurried in the direction of Dog Star House. He called back, ‘Please. It’s not safe. The storm’s right on top of us.’

They moved quickly along the bank. Heavy rain drops pounded at their heads. The once placid surface of the dyke shivered as rain struck it. More than once Eden expected to see those sacs floating there that contained the tiny men and women, with bright watchful eyes. Not that there was anything now; had she imagined them? Through veils of rain the house emerged.

Mr Hezzle slowed. ‘Is that smoke?’

Eden paused. No doubt about it. Smoke streamed from the roof. ‘Mr Hezzle, did you see lightning strike the house?’

‘No, but it’s possible.’ He stared as a flickering yellow glow manifested itself through a window. ‘Can you see your family?’

‘They must still be inside the house!’

They started to run along the bank of the dyke, and became aware of another sound. A rushing noise; a huge hissing - something that had the power to make the thunder seem small in comparison.

Mr Hezzle had just had time to shout, ‘He’s coming! He knows the bones are in the house! He’s seen they’re going to be burnt again!’

Eden looked back as a terrific blast of air struck them. A figure sped toward her; a bewildering tumult of shadowy limbs; a sense of a solid object moving so fast it couldn’t properly be seen. Only eyes. They blazed like the headlamps on a car. A suggestion of utter rage pierced her brain. Then the air it drove before itself with such force intensified to the point it bowled her through the long grass, as if she was nothing more than a doll. Then the figure was past them and gone.

Dragging herself to her feet, she dashed toward the house. ‘Come on, Mr Hezzle. I need you!’ The man appeared astonished by her resilience, yet he scrambled to his feet to run after her.
A man of one hundred shouldn’t be able to run that fast, heck he shouldn’t be able to run at all,
she told herself,
but inside Mr Hezzle, isn’t there human blood mixed with that of the First Man?

They reached the garden gate. Mr Hezzle effortlessly maintained the same punishing pace as Eden. By now, smoke bled through the roof tiles of the house. Grey fumes vied with the rain for the control of the airspace.

Once through the gate into the garden, Eden saw that the back door had been ripped from its hinges and was resting at the far side of the lawn. He - the primordial hominid, the First Man, would-be begetter of a new race - had torn away the door, then flung it carelessly behind him.

What she said next was
utterly
unnecessary, but somehow
utterly
essential to voice: ‘He’s got inside!’

‘No, Miss, let me go first.’

His plea went unheeded as she sped through the raw, gaping wound of the doorway, its torn frame hanging in pieces; even the surrounding brickwork had been shattered by the force of entry.

‘It’s me, Eden Page,’ she shouted as she moved through the kitchen. ‘I’m here. Don’t worry. You’re safe.’
I’m not talking to Heather and Curtis,
she thought in surprise.
I’m talking to
him
.

She found herself engulfed in thick smoke, her arms sweeping before her, as she felt a route through the burning building. After the coldness of the rain the hot air against her face became searing. Its heat dried her clothes in seconds. In the hallway mirror she glimpsed herself through roiling fumes. Her hair steamed. Yet her eyes were bright, alive, eager - disconcertingly eager.

‘Don’t be afraid. I’m here to help you.’

She pushed open the living-room door. There a figure pounced on her.

In the smoke filled room all she could make out were two hands that gripped her throat. Then a voice.

A familiar voice: ‘I should have done this days ago! I’m burning the bloody bones! Did you hear, you idiot girl? Humpty’s bones - they’re going up in smoke!’

‘Curtis. You’ve got to get out.’

Another hand reached up from the floor to grip her thigh. ‘Curtis has set fire to the house.’ Heather couldn’t manage to rise from the living room floor. She coughed, desperately trying to draw air in the smoke-filled room. ‘He threatened to do it before... I warned you not to frighten him.’

‘Curtis. Let me take Heather outside. The smoke’s killing her.’

‘No, we’re staying... we’re staying. We’re going to watch those blasted bones turn to ash.’

There was a thud from elsewhere in the house and his face changed. ‘Where is it? I know it got inside.’

Mr Hezzle stood in the doorway trying to catch his breath, the thick smoke was choking him. ‘He’s in the room with the bones. He’s trying to save them.’

‘Get it out!’ screamed Curtis. ‘Get it out of my home!’

He lunged at Mr Hezzle, pushing him down. Disorientated by terror and smoke he grabbed the ornate walking stick from the stand in the hall then rushed down to corridor to the lab where the bones were kept - and the smoke was thickest. For one panic-driven moment he made one last attempt to tackle the figure that had broken into his house. He shouted hoarsely and waved the stick through the smoke. But his fragile courage only lasted a split-second. With a high pitched shout his nerve broke. He turned and blundered down the corridor, away from the lab. Eden tried to stop Curtis from hurting himself as he crashed against the walls, sending pictures flying and ornaments crashing to the floor in his desperation to escape.

‘No! No! Let go of me!’ Sweat poured down his face. His eyes blazed in pure fear. ‘Don’t let it touch me. For God’s sake! Let go.’ He pushed by, then scrambled out of the house, screeching like an injured pig.

‘Mr Hezzle.’ Eden made her way to where the man was slumped. She helped him up. ‘Get my aunt out of here. The smoke’s killing her.’

He seemed uncertain on his feet, so Eden went into the living-room, pulled her aunt upright, then made sure the pair supported each other as they moved unsteadily toward the back door.

Mr Hezzle coughed, his eyes were streaming; nevertheless, he called back, ‘Miss? Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to help him save the bones.’

He gave her a look that said all too clearly:
Please don’t. Save yourself.
But he knew the strength of her spirit now.

16. Friday Night: 10.30

When Eden Page moved toward the lab it seemed as if she crossed a threshold. She passed from this reality of the house, one that burned because Curtis’s mind had snapped, to enter another reality; one that seemed misty rather than smoke-filled. The house became strangely quiet. When she stepped through the doorway into the room that contained the skeleton she saw a pool of burning petrol on the floor. Its brightness equalled a noonday sun in the breathless zenith of summer. A desperate figure strode back and forth. It longed to save the skeleton on the burning table; only its animal mind couldn’t tell it how. Instead it pounded its bare chest with the flat of one hand, while running its fingers through its hair with the other. She’d expected to find a heavy ape face - a kind of muscular gorilla visage; all black fur, thick curling lips, yellowing fangs. Instead, she saw a fine-boned face of immense delicacy. No facial hair; the teeth shone white. From that face a pair of wise yet wounded eyes were held by the spectacle of bones beginning to char on the table.

‘Let me help,’ she found herself saying in a gentle voice. ‘We’ll put the bones into this bag.’ She pulled a canvas sack from a shelf. Ancient pottery fragments began to pop with the heat. Eden extended her hand to take a thigh bone.

With a cry the First Man pushed her hand away. His fingers were long, tapering, the kind of fingers she’d expect belonging to a musician. Despite the way he’d torn away the house door from its frame, he wasn’t stockily built. The name First Man had prepared her for an ancient creature but this was a man in his youth. His face had a smoothness of a sculpted Apollo. His naked skin was clean; the hair on his head shone with health. True, his nose and brow were the dominant features of his face. However, there was nothing ugly or beastlike; instead he resembled one of those graceful statues found in museums; of beautiful youths in pure white marble that are eternally waiting for the gods to breathe life into their still bodies.

The heat reached a shelf of chemicals that Heather used to preserve her finds. Blue fire belched out across the ceiling. The First Man didn’t flinch. He needed to save the bones of his brother.

That’s all that mattered.

All he cared about.

His mind had gone, true, but an old love still endured.

Eden once more reached out to the bones. ‘I won’t damage them. I’m helping,’ she said firmly yet gently. ‘I know about you. I know that you won’t hurt me. You are good and wise.’

He watched her move the bones from the table to the bag. There was anxiety in his eyes. He tensed, as if at any moment he’d snatch the bones from her. But then he understood. This female stranger wasn’t causing harm. She was rescuing sacred treasure from the flame. For the first time he raised his eyes so they locked with hers.

Eden moved automatically. Her hand glided across the table to gently transfer the bones into the bag. At that instant, it seemed as if she watched her actions from outside herself. There, in the burning room, stood a woman by the name of Eden Page. Her fingers were scorched by heat. Smoke formed a dense fog. Yet still the slight form of the woman worked to save the ancient bones. Her features were smooth, untroubled, almost relaxed. And standing at the other side of the table, a tall figure. A man who had carefully husbanded his Gift for eighteen hundred years. A remarkable man, the last of his species, and possibly the first of another.

Eden placed the remaining skull fragments in the bag. Her mind floated free of its flesh now. It seemed as if she passed into a coma as she stood there. A drowsiness seeped through her veins to feed shadows into her head. Ancient vases exploded before the intense heat. Hot air currents made her hair stream upward. Yet Eden only heard the beat of her heart; her skin felt cool. The First Man stepped through the barrier of smoke. He reached out slender fingers to touch her face. A sensation of taking a cold, refreshing drink on a hot day passed through her; a thirst quenching draught. Instead of smoke, she smelt dew on a spring lawn. Then Eden had a vision of this man - this young-old being. Perhaps what she saw had actually happened, and he poured his own memories into her brain in a way she didn’t understand. The vision revealed images of the First Man and his kind living here in houses made of turf and thatch five thousand years ago. Then refugees reached here after being driven out of their homeland by tribal wars. The First Men welcomed the exhausted people that carried their starving children. They gave the refugees food, shelter and so much more. Then she saw the winter’s day when Roman soldiers marched along the newly built
Via Britannicus
to their provincial garrisons. A brutally cold morning, when Hezzle’s ancestors hacked open the frozen earth to lay something withered, yet still glorious into the ground. The last of the First Men sang with his neighbours as men refilled the grave. That cleft in the soil would never be completely sealed, however. It would receive gifts of coins for the next eighteen centuries. The walls of the house began to flow. Eden realised arms supported her; the First Man carried her out of the burning house. Cool rain soothed her scorched body. The sky was a tumult of black, green, grey and blue.

They went to the pit at the bottom of the garden. After tenderly placing his brother’s bones back into the grave, The First Man carried Eden away. She glimpsed Heather and Curtis. Their faces were strangely blanched shapes, huddled together by the road, as they watched her departure. Mr Hezzle was there. He began to raise his hand to stop the First Man taking her. Then he dropped his arm, stood aside: he understood.

Waves of sleep washed over Eden as the man ran with her in his arms. At times fully conscious before slipping away once more. Dimly, as if the real world had become an unreal phantom, she glimpsed fields, fences, trees rushing by. The dyke overflowed. Instead of presenting formal straight lines, it had flooded out over the meadows to become a formless shape with careless, rounded edges. As her mind surrendered to unconsciousness she once again visualised the First Man’s existence. The swift passage of lovers and sons and daughter from life to death. The repetition of meeting, bonding, then parting became too much for him. Grief accumulated. The weight of sadness became too much. As the centuries passed his upper-mind slipped away. The power of speech evaporated. Now he had the instincts of a fox.

When that instinct told him they were safe from the flames he set her down. They stood face to face in a far-flung heath. An empty place. No houses. Not so much as a single tree. Here, a vast blanket of grass rooted into wet dirt. Eden’s feet sank into moist turf. Rain sighed from the heavens. The First Man closely watched her face as if he saw someone he half-remembered. Perhaps her expression was familiar, rather than her features. He could read a meaning there. An intention.

The effort of trying to remember grew too intense; he shuddered. At the same time he began to turn away. Instinct told him it was time to leave.

‘No.’ She forced that cloying drowsiness out of her mind. ‘I want you to stay.’

She put her arms around him. The muscles in his back quivered at her touch.

‘You remained here for a purpose. I’m going to help you remember.’

His eyes darted as if an inner voice urged him to escape.

‘Stay,’ she murmured. ‘Stay.’

At last, he allowed his body to relax. He lay down on the ground, the spontaneous act of a creature needing to rest a while. She lay beside him. The wet grass drenched her; mud turned her fingers slippery as she moved so she could lie close to him. There, she gazed up into the dark cloud that spilled its rain onto their bodies.

When she spoke she addressed herself as much as the man: ‘I have a purpose now. We’re going to leave our mark on this world.’

It didn’t happen straight away. By degrees, by subtle signs of acceptance, he allowed her to embrace him as they lay there. When his arms encircled her in a hug of such simple, yet heart-warming fondness, she had to gasp. She’d wanted this to happen. She absolutely did. But the realisation that she’d found a way through a defensive shell into his affection caught her by surprise. The knowledge he wanted her moved Eden.

‘At last,’ she murmured.