The Dark Stone

  The Dark Stone

  Mark R Faulkner

  ©2013 Mark R Faulkner

  Acknowledgements

  I’d like to say a special thank you to my wonderful partner and editor, Fay Jones. Also thanks go to Kath Middleton and Julie Stacey for the proofreading and encouragement.

  Original cover photograph by Nik Crabtree.

  1

  Ma sneezed.

  Soup splashed over the side of the bowl she was carrying and thick silence filled the room, only to be shattered when Pa’s spoon slipped from his hand and rattled off the stone floor.

  Lillian began to cry. “You’re not going to die are you mummy?” she asked, sniffing a string of snot back into her nose.

  “No my love, of course not. It’s probably just a cold or something, nought to worry about.”

  None of the family was convinced. Sam tried to fool himself into believing his mother’s reassurances, but one glance at her face told him otherwise. Pa sat on his high backed chair; pale, wide eyed, and staring at his wife. Unlike him she had colour in her cheeks, but it was the slight flush of an early fever. Her hand was trembling and as she set down the bowl, more soup spilled onto the worn table-top. “For goodness sakes,” she snapped and stormed back into the kitchen to fetch the next bowl and a cloth. While she busied herself wiping soup from the table and floor, the rest of the family sat in glum silence, staring at their dinner.

  Sam had no appetite and slowly stirred his spoon around the inside of his bowl, occasionally lifting out chunks of vegetables before letting them slip back in with a splash.

  “If you don’t stop doing that you’ll get a clip ‘round the ear,” Ma said whilst attacking the table with the cloth.

  Sam just pushed his lumps of carrot around in circles instead of splashing.

  “Well eat up then,” said Pa. “Frettin’ ain’t going to do you no good is it? As your Ma says, it’s just a cold. Nothing to worry about.”

  Lillian, who was sitting to one side of Sam, was still sniffling and studying the slimy trails on her the back of her hand and on the other side, Louise was busy untying a knot she’d twisted in her hair. He raised his head to look across the table at his father and for a moment their eyes met. Pa was more worried than anyone.

  The children were sent to bed early and all three trudged upstairs without complaint. Sam said a subdued goodnight to his sisters before closing his own door and climbing into bed, but he found sleep impossible. His parents’ voices drifted up through the floor from downstairs, too muffled to distinguish what they were saying. Every so often their conversation was punctuated by Ma’s sneezing and later on, when she developed a hacking cough, Sam buried his head beneath the bedclothes to blot it out.

  In the dark of his room and cocooned in his blanket, eyes wide open, he heard Ma and Pa climbing the stairs and going to bed. Through the wall he could hear Ma’s cough getting worse and the bed creaked until well into the night, letting Sam know at least one of them couldn’t settle. He heard nothing from his sisters’ room.

  The next morning Pa came downstairs alone. The children asked no questions of him but could plainly hear Ma hacking away in her room. It was obvious she was ill, but she was still alive and that was the only answer they needed to know. For breakfast they each ate a lump of hard bread and washed it down with water. The silence around the table was awkward as each tried, and failed, to find the right words to begin a conversation.

  When they heard the familiar sound of the bell coming up the street, Sam flinched. Lillian and Louise threw their arms around each other and Pa’s shoulders sagged. Moments later, they heard hooves and cart wheels slowly trundling over the cobbles outside. The clang of the bell sounded louder than usual and Sam could clearly imagine the greasy man ringing it without needing to look out of the window.

  “Can we go see her?” he asked.

  Pa seemed to mull the question over for a moment before slowly nodding his head. Three chairs all scraped across the tiles at once. “Just… don’t get too close,” he said. Sam was already halfway up the narrow stairs. Pa rose more slowly, with effort, and followed after his children.

  Ma looked really ill, and the sight of her left no doubt she was suffering something more serious than a cold. Large boils festered on her swollen neck and covered her red, blotchy face while her eyes appeared as if laced with milk. Sam raced to her side and took her hand in his. It was hotter than a hand should be. A fit of coughing took her and she was forced to sit almost upright as spasms wracked her ribs. When her head lifted from the pillow, Sam noticed spots of blood where she’d been lying.

  His sisters stood by the door, one on either side of Pa who had an arm around each of them. Sam stayed by his Mother’s side, afraid to look away even for a second. At some point, Lillian and Louise must have been ushered out because Pa pulled up a chair next to the bed. “What am I going to do?” he muttered, more to himself than anyone.

  The following day passed as a dream would, fuzzy around the edges. Ma passed away shortly before dawn and Pa pulled the blanket up to cover her face. For Sam, the final act of covering her over was more than he could bear and all his grief erupted at once. Tears streaked down his face while he wailed. Pa was crying too and slung his arms around him, pulling Sam’s head to his chest.

  When they heard the bell coming down the road, Sam helped his father carry Ma’s body downstairs and out into the street. Louise ran out first to tell the man to wait while they lifted her off the bed. The weight of his mother's body surprised him and he struggled to even pick up her ankles. Pa was at the head end, arms hooked under her shoulders and although he tried not to show it, he was also feeling the strain. Lifting her from the bed however, was the easy part.

  Halfway down the stairs, Sam could feel his fingers beginning to slip and lose their grip. He clung harder, determined not to let his mother fall undignified. His fingers and forearms screamed at him and threatened to let go of their own accord but he clung on as if his own life depended on it.

  As they alighted the bottom step, Sam saw droplets of sweat forming on Pa's brow and could feel it leaking from his own temples and running down his face. He asked his father to wait for a moment, to catch his breath, and placed Ma's body down as gently as he could. After flexing his fingers they picked her back up to resume her final journey.

  The man by the cart wore a long black cloak in some semblance of decency. However it was tattered and caked in mud and other stains which Sam tried not to think too hard about. His hair was long, greasy and matted while an already pock-marked face boasted a smattering of fresh red boils, some of which were weeping yellow and pink pus. He stank worse than his morbid cargo of bodies, which were already piled high. Two rails had been nailed along the length of the cart to stop them spilling into the road.

  With one last monumental effort, Sam hoisted Ma's legs above his head before he and Pa between them threw her onto the pile of festering corpses. Gas seeped from the heap and the stench of it made Sam heave, but for the sake of his family he managed to keep hold of his bile. It wasn't right, he thought, throwing out his mother like an old, broken pot.

  Sam and his father stood in the middle of the street with their heads slightly bowed and watched as the cart slowly trundled away and the man resumed his steady ringing of the bell. Louise and Lillian were standing in the doorway, clinging to each other, weeping as they watched Ma being borne away.

  Only when the cart rounded the corner and disappeared from view did they move. They could still hear the bell, getting fainter as it became more distant. And then the ringing stopped and Sam shuddered. A quick look up and down the street showed more than one face peering at them from behind partially closed shutters. As Sam caught their eye, the onlookers sheepishly avert
ed their eyes and disappeared from the windows.

  When they were back inside, Pa went straight to the kitchen and fetched a bottle from the pantry, taking it to his chair in the corner while Sam and Louise did their best to distract Lillian. No one spoke about Ma, nor the pestilence sweeping through the city like wildfire. Sam wanted to talk about it but like all of them, he couldn’t find the right words to begin. As Pa sat drinking, the children played games and tried to make as little noise as they could.

  Over the following days and weeks, Pa's appetite for his bottle grew and each day he would rise a little later. He became gaunt and grey of skin, his face went unshaven and stubble started to transform into a full beard. For most of the time he sat in his chair doing nothing but drinking and staring into space. The children knew better than to disturb him, although sometimes they would glance over to see him looking back at them with a tear welling in his eye. Louise did the cooking while Sam would go into the small yard behind their house and chop wood.

  Pa largely shunned efforts to make him more comfortable; shrugging off the blankets which the children placed around his shoulders and ignoring the food they put beside his chair until it went cold, stale and inedible. He'd developed a nasty cough but after a few days it hadn't got any worse, so the children hoped it was nothing more serious than the effects of drink.

  2

  Sam had already been up and about for a while when a bleary eyed Lillian came downstairs, still dressed in her nightie and rubbing her eyes.

  "Where's Louise?" he asked. It was unlike her to sleep in late or lie about in bed. Suddenly he was afraid.

  "She wouldn't wake up?" she replied, quickly followed by, "I'm hungry."

  "Wait there." He raced up the stairs two at a time and burst into his sisters’ room.

  Louise lay on the bed; pale, clammy and shivering. She gazed up at her brother with large, fearful eyes and opened her mouth to speak. A fit of coughing cut her short.

  "Wait there." Sam leapt back out of the room and across the landing to batter on his father’s door. "Pa. Wake up Pa. Louise 'int well. Hurry."

  A muffled grunt came from within, followed by a groan and the creaking of the bed as Pa arose. The door flew open and he strode from the room. "Well don't just stand there, fetch some water."

  When Sam returned upstairs with the water, Pa had set his chair next to Louise's bed. Somehow, a bottle already stood on the floor next to it. He looked at Sam with bloodshot eyes and took the pitcher from him. Sam loitered, unsure, until his Father reminded him to check Lillian was alright, and that she needed looking after.

  It was after long hours of waiting that Pa returned downstairs and resumed his normal place in the chair. Lillian and Sam looked up from where they'd been making drawings of animals on the hearth with bits of charcoal, and toward their father for answers. It took a while for him to notice. "She's at peace now," was all he finally muttered.

  "Ah good," said Lillian, not quite understanding. “Maybe she'll feel better when she wakes up."

  From the tone of his father’s voice Sam understood perfectly well what he meant and waited a moment for him to elaborate. When he didn't, Sam had to try and explain it to her. "She won't be waking up."

  "Why not?" Her brain was unwilling and slow to comprehend.

  "Louise's dead." he told his little sister flatly.

  "No she's not. She's upstairs, resting. Dad just said."

  Sam placed a hand on her arm. "No Lillian, she's dead. Same as Ma."

  "Lillian's bottom lip began to tremble. "No."

  "Yer sister's gone. Gone I tell ya. Just like yer Ma, just as your brother said." Pa's shouting cut her short.

  A shrill wailing came from her, quiet at first but building to a crescendo. All Sam could do was cover his ears and hope none of it was real as Pa took another long swig from his bottle.

  Next morning, Sam helped carry Louise to the cart. She was lighter than Ma had been, but it was still a struggle to keep her stiff limbs from slipping out of his grasp. Both he and his father had about them a steely, silent resolution. A different man walked with the cart, equally as repulsive as the last and Sam noticed there were fewer faces looking from the neighbours’ windows. They didn’t stop to watch the cart trundle away down the street and instead retreated back into the house the moment they’d hoisted Louise up onto the festering heap of corpses.

  Sam felt hollow, consumed from within by a bleak emptiness. He didn’t shed any tears for his sister and was left wondering whether he would be next. He was also fretting about how he'd cope with Lillian. Pa was of no use; catatonic for most of the time, he stared into space, only moving at all to take another slug from the bottle. Both Lillian and Sam’s efforts to cuddle him went unreciprocated. That night they went to bed hungry. Sam, angry with Pa, left him sitting in his chair without a word of goodnight.

  He rose early after a restless night of little sleep. The morning was young and outside it was not yet fully light. Deep shadows filled the house. Pa was still propped in his chair, just as they'd left him the night before. Sam tip-toed past so as not to wake him but stepped in something wet and tacky. He looked down to notice the dark patch beneath his feet which spread out across the floorboards and under the rug, coming from the side of the chair where Pa's arm hung limply. Instantly, Sam knew something was wrong. "Pa," he said placing a hand on his father's shoulder, nudging it.

  The breadknife fell to the floor with a clatter. Pa's head lolled to one side. His eyes stayed closed.

  "Pa." A nudge turned to a shove which in turn evolved into full-on shaking. Sam screamed at his dad to wake up and shook him so hard that he slumped forward and rolled off the chair. Pa’s neck crumpled beneath his body when his head hit the floor with a crack. And still he did not wake. Pa had cut his wrist so deeply and so jaggedly that Sam caught an unwanted glimpse of white bone inside the gaping, dripping wound.

  Just then, a sound from upstairs alerted him to Lillian getting out of bed. He couldn't let her see their father the way he was and panicked, trying to find a blanket to cover him up with. There was nothing in sight. Footsteps let him know Lillian was walking across her bedroom floor, probably dressed already.

  With a monumental effort, Sam grabbed Pa by the shoulders and heaved him to the middle of the rug, the awkward position of his head making the task all the more difficult. Quickly, he threw first one half of the rug, and then the other across his father, just as Lillian came sleepily down the stairs.

  "What's for breakfast?" she asked.

  "I'll have a look." Unthinking, Sam went to the kitchen and started rummaging around while Lillian stepped over the folded rug and pulled herself onto a chair at the table. "What's in there?" she asked.

  "In where?" Sam shouted from the kitchen where he'd managed to find some cheese.

  "In the rug?"

  He came back into the room, his face serious. "Pa died." He told her straight.

  For a moment there was no reaction. Then she let out a small, "I'm scared."

  "Me too." Sam reached out and pulled his sister close. They hugged each other tightly and stayed there, neither one of them wanting to let go. Lillian assumed Pa had been taken by the same disease as Louise and Ma. Sam saw no reason to tell her otherwise.

  When they heard the cart coming down their street, both Sam and Lillian ran out to meet it after Sam found he didn't have enough strength to move Pa’s body on his own. How he'd managed to drag him onto the rug in the first place he didn't know. At first the filthy man seemed reluctant to help, but two children begging must have touched some tender spot within him. Begrudgingly, the man left the cart in the road and came inside the house, casting his weasly eyes around the room. Sam pointed to the parcel on the floor.

  The man wasn't strong and cursed openly as they wrestled Pa from the house; a task made more unpleasant by the steady rain which had begun at some time in the night. The cart was full to brimming with corpses and as they emerged from the house, some of the neighbours were waiting on
their own doorsteps with pale, tear streaked faces.

  And then they were two. A gangly youth and a six year old girl, having her innocence snatched away at every turn. Sam needed to think. He was the man of the house now and needed to step up to the mark but didn't know where to begin and so did what he knew best, which was chopping wood. He stepped out of the kitchen, into the yard and instantly cursed himself for leaving the wood uncovered. The rain had got heavier, big cold splats of it and puddles were starting to form in low spots, one of which surrounded the bottom of the woodpile.

  I can't do this, he thought and walked back into the house, leaving the axe and the wood untouched. "We need help," Sam told his sister before taking her hand and heading out into the street through the front door.

  All was quiet. Like them, most people were staying inside their houses, believing isolation might save them from death. Sam rapped his knuckles on the next-door neighbours' front door and when there was no reply he banged harder. Still no reply was forthcoming so they moved to the door on the other side of theirs and tried there.

  "Who is it?" came a woman's voice from inside.

  "It's Sam and Lillian from next door."

  "Go away," the voice said from behind the door. She sounded angry and Sam couldn't work out why. Sure, she'd shouted at them a few times to get off her wall and other such misdemeanours, but nothing worth turning them away for.

  "Please," started Sam. He realised he didn't know the names of the people who lived in the house. "Please… Our family died and we need help."

  "I said, go away."

  "But..." It was hopeless to argue so they tried the next door along, and the next and at each door they tried, there was either no answer or they were not welcome. Eventually, wet through and tired, the brother and sister returned home where Sam tried in vain to light a fire with damp wood, but in the end he gave it up as hopeless. They both changed into dry nightclothes and shared a bed, holding onto each other for comfort and warmth.