Heal the Sick, Raise the Dead Page 2

  Cato led Perdita by the hand to make sure that she didn't slip and we soon reached the lifeboat, hidden away from the strong cross-winds behind a rock. I stowed the sack beneath one of the planks that made up the seats as Marcus started effortlessly pulling the boat towards the water, showing off his strength by only using one of his impressive arms. Cato helped Perdita board as it moved down the pebbles of the beach, lifting her onto a seat before stumbling and slipping alongside her. Marcus continued pulling aggressively until he was knee deep in water and the boat was afloat, whereupon we both climbed on board and picked up the oars.

  “It looks so small from here, but it served its purpose, I suppose,” said Cato, staring wistfully behind us as we pushed against the incoming waves, the boat peaking and dipping over the grey foam.

  “Your manhood?” asked Marcus sarcastically, his lip curling into a grin that could almost be considered handsome, if his comments weren't so uniformly ugly. He grunted to himself with the effort of rowing, before shrugging his coat off and letting the sea spray cool his body as he rowed. The cloth of his ragged shirt clung to his muscles as he powered us forwards. We didn't have a firm destination in mind on the mainland, as it was just a line of grey on the horizon at the moment. I hoped that as we approached it we would spot something, some landmark or town that we could head towards. There had to be something there. There had to be people.

  Soon the island became a minute detail shrinking away to almost nothing, as if it were nothing more than a clump of floating detritus. When it had eventually disappeared altogether behind the horizon I finally and truly felt there was no going back. The thought was a release unlike any other I could recall. I sighed deeply and Perdita glanced at me, tilting her head to study my expression.

  The rest of the journey was carried out in silence, the only sounds being the creak of the oars and the answering movement of the waves.

  The outline of the land seemed barren at first, before blossoming with details. It filled the far horizon, greys and greens and suggestions of other colours. Cato leaned a little out of the boat to take it all in, his eyes narrowing as he concentrated. It looked to be a rocky coastline for the most part – all granite cliffs and tufts of clinging grass – but as Marcus angled the boat to the right a small harbour came into view, surrounded by ten or eleven buildings. They were low lying, stone, with tiled roofs in various states of repair.

  “It looks deserted,” I said, as Marcus paused for a moment to catch his breath. The journey so far had been almost fourteen hours and there was the hint of twilight starting to creep into our periphery, leeching what little colour there was from the landscape.

  “I think it looks dead,” said Cato, wriggling back into his seat and hunching down, pulling an oil stained blanket around his fragile shoulders.

  “He does,” said Marcus, jabbing his oar into a mass of passing grey flesh. It erupted with gases, spraying rot and necrosis onto the surface of the water. It was the remains of a torso, with the right leg as the only limb still attached. The undulating water made it dance a strange marionette jig. The head was little more than a mass of stringy flesh hanging for dear life onto bone and tendon. Cato pulled Perdita close and hid her face within the blanket.

  “Marcus, she doesn't need to see that,” I said, as the huge man sat back down, rocking the boat with his movement.

  “There'll be a lot worse on the mainland, mark my words. I'm just trying to get her ready for that. We won't be able to keep her under a blanket forever,” he growled in reply, falling back into his rowing rhythm and pushing us towards land.

  The harbour was for the most part empty. There was the remains of a rowing boat half submerged but still anchored, with only the prow still poking out of the waves, and beyond it there was a concrete ramp leading from the water up to the the top of the harbour. We couldn’t guide our boat directly towards it as a large battered and rusty van had been driven half way down it, tethered by a thick rope to a steel ring on the quayside. There was some sort of tall fence panel or planking attached to the back of the van, the top of which stood about a metre out of the water, blocking it off completely and forcing us to row up to a smaller docking platform further in. When we had pulled alongside the slick concrete, Marcus gingerly stepped out and tethered the boat, helping each of us out in turn.

  As we carefully snaked our way up the drizzle soaked stone steps of the harbour, night truly began to fall. Marcus carried Perdita in his arms as if she were a baby and Cato struggled under the weight of our supplies, his breath wheezing and rattling in his chest. The last little bit of light from the sun winked at us from across the sea, before ducking behind the horizon and leaving us with the pitiful amount of moonlight that was forcing its way through the cloud cover. The rain began to fall again, solid and purposeful.

  When we had cleared the steps I knelt down and fished in the pack, pulling out a glass jar holding one of our last remaining candles, wrapped in cloth. I had tied a matchbox to it with string but it only held two matches and as I opened the box my numbed fingers dropped one of the precious items.

  “Butterfingers,” said Marcus quietly.

  “What's butter?” asked Cato from somewhere in the gloom.

  I quickly knelt down and felt around my feet, but when I finally spotted the match I saw that it had fallen in a puddle and was now useless. With one left, I crouched down against the wind, and gave a little prayer to whatever higher deity would be listening.

  As I flicked the match against the box it fitfully flared into life. I quickly lit the candle's wick and dropped a few drops of wax into the jar, before gingerly placing the base of the candle onto the molten pool. My fingers protested as the flame burned my skin a little but I managed to keep the candle straight. I stood up and held the jar in front of me as I warily scanned our surroundings.

  The spoils of humanity were everywhere. There were various mounds of papery mush all around us that presumably had once been newspapers, documents and books, discarded and left to decompose in the rain. Empty food wrappers, tin cans, and even electronics lay everywhere. I moved forward a little, pushing through the rubbish with my bare feet. Something caught my eye and I knelt down, wiping some grime from a plastic bottle of water. The label had long gone but the bottle was still sealed, so I passed it up to Cato, who opened it and passed it to Marcus. The huge man made to swallow the contents in one huge messy gulp but Cato wagged a finger, feeding him bit by bit, making soothing clucking sounds with his tongue. It occurred to me that Perdita and Cato rarely consumed anything...

  “We need some food. Well, Marcus does. I'm not hungry,” said Cato, trying desperately to pull his ragged hood over both his head and face.

  “You're never hungry,” I said, standing back up and trying to work out which of the nearby buildings was the best to head towards. There was still not a sound except for the rain and the occasional rattle of a tin can skittering across the concrete, nudged by the breeze. “I don't know how you keep going. You should be dead.”

  Cato ignored the point. “Maybe we can start a fire, it would warm Marcus up.”

  “If we start a fire, every person nearby will know exactly where we are,” I said, seeming to be the only one who had any inkling about how others would react to us, even though I had no idea if this knowledge was from past experience or fanciful musing.

  “I'm cold and wet, lets get inside,” said Marcus, for his usual blunt part of the conversation. He was flexing his fingers in, out, in, out, as if crushing the head of an imaginary mouse.

  “Yes yes, we should hide, mmm, very good,” murmured Cato. He had stopped walking and seemed lost in his own thoughts again. Annoyance bubbled within me.

  “We can't just hide forever. Why did we come here if we're not going to try and find someone?” I gave the two men a nudge and tried to guide the group towards a likely looking shelter. A two storey cottage stood a bit behind the other buildings. It was protected from most of the elements and seemed a good place to start in our se
arch for shelter.

  As we drew closer, with our feet crunching on the gravel path, we saw that most of the windows were intact and the brickwork was strong. The door was good, solid wood, decades old, with varnish peeling off it like sunburnt skin. I placed my hand on the door handle, cast iron and freezing in the rain. I can't truly say why but despite my hope for some other human contact, I paused. The unlimited possibilities of the closed threshold overwhelmed me.

  “Come on, open the bloody thing. I'm tired of this rain,” said Marcus, grabbing the handle from me. It was unlocked. The door flew inwards, slamming against a small table and scattering photo frames, knocking a vase onto the dingy carpeted floor. The shrivelled plant it had once held flung itself free and fell in a halo of desiccated earth.

  The gloom inside almost carried a silence with it, as the sound of the rain became deadened to my ears. I cautiously pushed my arm into the darkness, the candle inside the jar feebly fighting against the shadows. Marcus and I crept forwards as Cato stood wringing his hands at the entrance and Perdita craned her head around his hip to see, pushing the loose strands of her hair from her porcelain face.

  There was an air of ancient decay in the house, an undisturbed rotting mustiness that stung my nostrils. Dust disturbed by our passing drifted into the light of the candle, dipping and swaying in the breeze from the open doorway.

  I could just about make out a staircase ahead, the bleached wood of its railings carrying the appearance of bones, pale and brittle. The carpet was well worn in the centre of the stairs but a faded blue floral pattern remained at the edges. The same carpet ran along the hallway, past a small basement door that stood slightly ajar and towards what looked like a kitchen, judging from the large silhouette of a wood burning stove visible through the open doorway. It stood out against the intermittent moonlight that was creeping through a rain spattered window beyond, its black iron belly cold and empty.

  "We could use..." Marcus started to say, but I placed a finger to my lips and rolled my eyes. Marcus frowned but kept quiet, rain running down his face and dripping from his jaw onto the carpet with a gentle patter. We needed to be sure we were alone before we made ourselves at home, after all, this was not our house. Our house was no doubt being pulled down by the elements, many miles away, lost forever in the water and mud.

  There were two doors either side of the hallway, both closed. The walls seemed a little damp but not mouldy and were covered with a simple white wood-chip wallpaper. There was a small brass light-switch to my left, which I flicked on and off once or twice. It made a gentle clicking sound but there was no light, as I had expected. When I looked up I saw water had pooled within the light-bulb that sat within a small blue shade, swirling as it swayed gently on the cord. Above the doorway on the left there was a small painting of a dock side in a plain mahogany frame, and I stopped a moment to stare in fascination. Even though they were small and indistinct and the brushwork was smudged and imprecise, still... the amount of people there... the conversations they must have, the families, the dreams, the arguments. I could almost hear them speak...

  The sound of Cato and Perdita's shuffling footsteps on the carpet awoke me from my reverie, and I looked at them questioningly.

  “It's too cold and wet outside, we'll wait here. Just inside, only a bit. Just to keep warm,” he whispered, his lips trembling. I nodded, and as they waited Marcus and I checked the two rooms either side of them.

  One of them was a sitting room of sorts, piled high with books in various states of repair. The curtains were drawn, giving the room an oppressive air, like a museum exhibit. There were antique armchairs, side-tables cluttered with photo frames and assorted knick-knacks, and curiosities and memorabilia scattered throughout what was obviously a study. There was also a small brandy glass with the contents long dehydrated into a dirty stain at the bottom, sitting next to an old style dial telephone. I picked up the receiver but the line was dead, which I somehow expected given the ancient feeling of the house. Although it hadn't been disturbed for a long time, the room still felt lived in. I tried to imagine what kind of person had sat in these chairs and leafed through all these books. I scanned the photographs, bringing my candle close to the faded images. They were all of various family and friend groups, some on holiday, some working on a fishing boat, and most containing one particular man. He looked quite tall and well built, his muscle turning to paunch in the later photographs as he entered retirement age, with the latest photographs showing him in his seventies. His smile, though a rare occurrence in the photos, seemed to carry the air of a World War II fighter pilot, with a thin salt and pepper moustache to complete the picture. Indeed, some of the photographs showed him in a uniform, though whether he was army, navy or air force I couldn’t say.

  The room was clearly free of any danger to us, so I gently closed the door and moved to the one opposite. There was a light scratching sound as the door closed, probably the wood catching on the carpet.

  The other room was a well maintained dining room, with the curtains also drawn. Five seats were spaced around the table at regular intervals, with a plain but elegant tablecloth still laid out. There was a cabinet filled with various assorted china and dishes, one or two pictures adorning the walls, but otherwise the room was nondescript. I could hear the sound of the rain tapping on the windows – a storm was beginning. We moved on.

  The kitchen turned out to be quite well stocked despite the apparent rush and mass departure of the harbour's residents. Everything within the fridge had long ago turned to rotten mush and green mould was overflowing from the bread bin, however there was a large supply of tinned food within the cupboards that overhung the counters. There was a gas stove fitted against the wall but when I tried to turn it on I found that the gas supply was cut, either at the house or at source. Either way it was useless. At least we had the wood burning stove, which was obviously an original antique fitting, later relegated to the sole job of providing heat. There was even some wood piled near the back door, and Marcus spotted a fat bodied spider lounging in a web between the logs. He viciously jabbed the gossamer strands with his finger and grinned maliciously as the spider ran towards the vibration, its swollen abdomen jiggling, before being disappointed by the lack of a meal. Cato tutted under his breath at Marcus' childish behaviour, making Marcus look briefly abashed, however he soon returned to his previous giddy demeanour when I pointed out all the food we had found. The curtains were open in this room and we could just about see the outline of a garden in the moonlight, with the wind whipping through the branches of the various trees and bushes that surrounded the small overgrown lawn at its centre.

  All four of us moved on and checked the upstairs, Cato not trusting Marcus to control himself in this new and fascinating environment. I tried to assure him that I had it under control but he still followed behind us, eyes scrutinising every detail of the building, assessing its safety. My nervousness dissipated more with each clear room but my longing for some human contact rose to replace it. All of these rooms, filled with these items... somehow I knew what they were and how they were used but I still had no idea of my past. Where had I been born, where had I grown up and how had I arrived on the island, flung onto the beach like a piece of driftwood? If I met someone and they recognised me, then... then what? What would I ask them? What answer would satisfy my curiosity? The truth might be a cold stark light, showing the details of my past but also highlighting any secret horrors it may contain. I pushed the thought to the back of my mind and tried to refocus. The rain had started to come down in sheets, huge droplets rattling the house's windows. We needed to find out if we could rest here first. Answers would come later, I hoped.

  We found the source of the leak in one of the smaller bedrooms, as rain was pouring through a gaping hole in the roof that had been caused by a falling tree. The huge trunk was still leaning against the house like a drunk at a bar, its branches reaching through the hole as if it was trying to keep itself upright. The carpet was waterlogg
ed and the room a lost cause, so we shut the door and checked the other rooms.

  There was a small and still functioning bathroom fitted with a bath, toilet and basin, and several brightly coloured pills in bottles kept within a glass cabinet. Cato hid these away in his coat to stop Marcus finding them and consuming them like they were sweets. The other two rooms on the floor were both bedrooms. The first was virtually bare, with an empty metal bedstead and a lingering stench of bleach. The second room however was much better for our purposes, containing a spacious double bed, still made and covered with crisply pressed linen. There were other bits of furniture in the room but as soon as I saw the bed my fatigue struck me like a hammer blow to the back of the head and I didn't even bother to look to see what they were. I had intended on organising some sort of sleeping arrangement to make the most of the beds but in the end we realised we were all so tired and familiar with each other that we simply settled under the covers of the double bed, hugging each other for warmth, with Perdita safe in our arms.

  The rain continued to fall, a wordless lullaby just for us, as the candle burned down into a puddle.

  2

  A Home Away From Home

  The rain was still falling when I awoke, slapping lazily down the roof tiles, however a bit of grey light was starting to creep between the curtains. I disentangled myself from the limbs of the others and slipped painfully out of bed, my joints aching from yesterday's journey.

  I crept over to the window and opened the faded yellow curtains. Outside the clouds were still moving swiftly across the sky so I knew it would be a blustery day. As I looked down on the harbour I saw the piles of rubbish seeming to flow and rearrange themselves in the wind.