A Season For Everything by Matthew Fairman (ready player one ebook TXT) 📕

fathers shotgun. It was an old BSA 12 bore boxlock. The smell of gun oil from inside its canvas bag released with it a thousand memories. The high swish of a stick beating at the tangled undergrowth. The beat and flurry of the pheasants wings as they rose into the air. The long misty mornings gathered int the fields the dogs howling and baying. The jolt and kick of the butt against his shoulder. It seemed like another life time. He reached up on top of the wardrobe and took down a box of red shells, he slid two into each of the breech ends. The shotgun rested broken in two halves over the crook of his elbow. It was dark downstairs but he could see Kaisers eyes shining, filled with the light from the upstairs landing. ‘C’mon boy. Get your coat on and show me what you were looking at up there in the quarry.’ Kaiser snorted through his nose as if he resented being woken, he sniffed at the cold steel barrel. Michael, wrapped in his waxed jacket and scarf took a flashlight and a roll of gaffer tape from a tool box beneath the stairs He stuffed the tape into one of his deep poaching pockets. With leash in hand, man and dog followed the pale yellow beam of light up the hill back towards the quarry.

Beaton awoke in his bed and tried to lift open his eyes The lids remained stuck so he peeled them open with his fingers. They were glued together with a dried crust. He could hear the wind whipping down the chimney and beneath the eaves. He was alone, he knew that he was alone in the old house. The sheets were knotted about his legs as though he had been tossing and turning in his sleep. He could feel the cool sweat on his skin, he was feverish. It was his childhood home, a place he had not stepped foot in for thirty years or more. He knew every inch of it and he could survey every corner with his mind if he pushed himself and his memories to do so. Moving from room to room, opening and closing doors. It was a small old stone cottage with a pitched roof set by the side of a busy road. The house had originally been part of a larger granary but over time it had been converted into two houses. The stones had been robbed from a cathedral after the dissolution of the great monasteries. It was true, some of the stone bore the marks of masons and there was even an elaborate piece of a corbel window set into a section of the upstairs wall. The road had been widened to make way for heavier traffic that fed a new major bypass to a larger town. The loose pains rattled in the windows as the lorries rumbled passed. It was a cold place, it had no radiators or a boiler and in the winter, the inside of the windows would be covered with a sheet of ice. There was a large open fireplace that when unlit, drew all the remaining heat from out of the house. The plaster was yellowed by damp and had crumbled into dusty piles on the stairs and along the skirting boards. The wooden beams were sodden and spongy at the ends. The bathtub was always filled with stranded woodlice. The tiles had slid from the roof and lay smashed about in the undergrowth. He stood up and went to the window, he looked down at the lamplight shining on the street. The sloping road that led form the pub to the churchyard. The tennis courts and the playing fields. The black hills against the deepening cobalt sky. But it wasn’t real, he knew that it was just like a photograph, a still. No one would walk by because everyone from that time had gone. If he reached out he could tear it all down with his bare hands. The house felt alive, baring down on him, an intense focus drawn from every fibre of the building surged around Beaton seated on the bed. He felt and heard the beating from within the walls, the house was alive. He went back to his bed. The bed began to writhe beneath him as if something were trapped within it. There came the wailing of a child, the muffled cries of a baby trapped inside. He stripped the bed in a hurry, flinging the sheets into a heap upon the bare floorboards. Raking and clawing at the exposed fabric of the mattress. Unravelling and pulling at the stuffing of the bed removing coiled springs and dry and straw tufts yellowing packed cotton. Lurking in the very heart of the bed was a small wooden box, it was a perfect cube carved from a dark teak wood. It’s surface was worn smooth with age. One face of the cube was set with a single hole in the centre and recessed within was an eye, clouded and misty with a grey green glaze. It had no eyelid with which to blink and it rolled and darted from this way to that. The wailing climbed and climbed to an ever greater pitch until the noise had filled his head completely. He threw the box into the corner it bounced and rolled along like a dice, clattering across the floor boards. On the blank upward facing side of the cube there appeared an orifice. It was toothless and from between it’s smooth gums there was the flick of a tiny reddish brown tongue inside, glistening, like a thin slice of raw liver. He stuffed his fingers into his hears but he couldn’t stop the howling wails. from rattling through his fevered brain. The wailing turned to laughing and before he knew what he was doing he was rolling on the floor pounding the boards with his fists. He gathered up the box into his lap and crouching in the corner of the room he screamed and laughed. There were two small holes either side of the mouth. He pushed his fingers into its ears and stared into its wild eye and laughed in it’s face. Giggling and shaking like some mad fiend. Shuddering in wild spasms as if every synapse were suddenly overloaded with great jolts of electricity.

 

He awoke on the freezing cold slab, the fur coat wrapped across his shoulders. His body quaked with the cold that seemed to have crept into every muscle every fibre of his body. His jaw juddered uncontrollably. The pale blue halo from the camping stove winked in the darkness like a sprite. ‘This place is driving me mad, I’ll lose my mind if I stay here. What was that. There,.... a noise. I hear it.’ There came from somewhere the sound of a dog. It was barking within the surrounding gloom. He gripped the handle of the carpet knife in his pocket.

 

Hollis took the main A road that left the Town and headed towards London. The road ran right through the village. Small glittering particles of dust floated about twinkling like chips of mica. The picturesque english village slumbering beneath the snow. She turned right at the traffic lights by the old church and took the small road that dipped down towards the river and rose again past the Quarryman’s arms. The road had become a river of black ice that wound up along the side of the woods. It was not going to be possible to drive to the top of the Quarry so Hollis parked the car by the side of the pub. She peered through the window, a light fell across the bar through an open doorway. Apart from this there was no other signs of life except the scent of burning coal floating in the cold sterile air. Somewhere, someone was sitting before the glow of a warm hearth. The slow steady crunch and creak of the compacted snow beneath her feet, she trudged along the roadside being careful not to fall into the snow filled ditch. Her legs sinking into the white powder right up to her knees. Clotted lumps of gathering white flakes attached themselves to her clothing. She looked at the signal bar on her phone, it slowly began to creep up as she ascended the hill.

The phone began to ring, it went to voicemail. ‘Steve, Steve, It’s Hollis. I’m up at the Quarry. I can’t explain everything over the phone but I know where he is, I know where he’s hiding. If you get this message call me back.’ She hung up and set the phone’s ring tone to vibrate and returned it to her coat pocket. The snow was shallower under the tree cover. It was easy to see the clear tracks that had been made recently through the snow. She turned out the torch, and guided her way by the deep black impressions stamped along the the white snowy path like a giant length of ticker tape.

 

As soon as Kaiser was freed from his leash he bolted into the darkness of the chamber. ‘Fuck sake Kaiser!’ Michael threw the torch down the slope ahead of himself and with one arm holding the shotgun and the other outstretched beneath him he carefully descended into the mine. He snapped shut the breech of the gun and placed it on the floor next to the torch. He reeled off a long strip of gaffer tape and bit it in two and bound the torch onto the end of the shotgun barrel. ‘Kaiser!!!, come here now!’ The dog appeared from one of the tributary tunnels and circled the large charred root at the centre of the chamber his tail wagging. Coils and puffs of hot steam rolled from the panting mouth of the dog. With the shotgun at his hip, Michael scanned the ground. Kaiser began to bark, he was stamping his front paws in the

dust by the side of the tree stump, the exact same spot he had been getting excited over yesterday. ‘What is it Kaiser, Aye?’ Michael squatted down leaning on the stock of the gun, the torchlight shining upwards bouncing from the low rock ceiling above. ‘Whats got into you, eh?’ Michael scratched Kaiser behind his ears and ran his hand along the length of his spine and patted his rump. Kaiser began to whine and paw at the twisted mass of roots of the tree stump. ‘Git, you great lummox, what you got there?’ Michael, resting on one knee, aimed the barrel of the shotgun at the stump. There was something out of place, something poking out from between the dry woody stems. He took hold of it an pulled it out. ‘Emma.’ He stood up and pressed the button on the handle, popping the umbrella open. ‘Emma, why would you of come down here of all places.’ He laid the open umbrella on the top of the tree stump. Kaiser bolted again, running into the far left tunnel, leaping over boulder he melted into the darkness and was lost form sight. ‘Ok Kaiser, I’ll listen to you this time, you lead the way then.’

 

The first thing that Beaton heard was the scrabble and scratch of loose rocks and the sound of claws clicking over the hard stones. He was crouching in a corner of the niche above the slab when kaiser found him. In a flash he felt the jaws bite into his coat, just above the right shoulder, the dog snarling and jarring his head from side to side as if to shake Beaton out from his hiding place. The sound of fabric tearing open at the seams. Beaton swung the blade up in his right hand and kicked out with one leg. There was a loud wailing whimper and the dog let go. Beaton tried to stand up but before he had the chance to extend his legs Kaiser was up and