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

And so on she went reminiscing like this as she walked into the woods, a running Eulogy to the memory of her son. She knew every path through the wooded Quarry and even under it’s blanket of snow she found her way easily.

‘Those must be his tracks.’

She followed them into the rock amphitheater and approached the mouth of the cave. She daren’t look up. She knew what was hanging there and she daren’t look up. She knew that under the snow was the exact spot where her child had fallen when she had cut him down. She had sat there many times and cried. It was easier to pass over with the snow to hide it. The footsteps disappeared with the snow. A slope of loose rock stones and grit led down into the entrance chamber of the mine. She ducked under and slid into the cave. She stood stark still and listened. There was nothing.

‘I know your in here, I know.’ As her eyes adjusted to the darkness she looked about. There was no obvious sign that anyone had been there recently. Someone had gathered together a fire in the middle of the floor but the large gnarled stump was damp and partially charred. She walked the perimeter of the chamber around the central hearth to see if there was something she had missed. Her head was raised, scanning the walls and the ceiling of the cave for clues. Unable to raise her foot to take a step, ensnared in something caught around her legs, Emma came crashing to the floor, stopping herself on her hands and her knees, letting out a short sharp scream.

It was his view that he had been making good progress with his plan but the twine had been a bad idea. He did not have nearly enough of it and it was fast running out. He was fast reaching the point where he would have to make a decision. To tie the twine up and come back with more or to abandon the lifeline and continue without it. It had so far been a source of comfort to him and had helped him to keep going. Knowing that behind him there was a line that led straight out into the light. The air in the tunnel was stale. There was a coldness that seemed to creep right into your clothes and stay there. He regretted not having his raincoat on him. The tunnels were mainly wide, big enough to fit a car down but the floor was strewn with large boulders and rocks that had come crashing down from above. Some of the walls look slick with wet. Small pink stalactites hung from the limestone like frozen earth worms. Several of the side tunnels had collapsed completely. It was frightening to think of the sheer weight that was pressing down from above. At certain strategic places the roof had been jacked up by the engineers with wooden props. It was a testament to their skill and hard work that they still helped to keep the mine shafts open. Still, the thick black timber jambs looked as if they might crumble if prodded too hard.

‘This mine is like me in more ways than one. I feel like all my props are slowly crumbling away. At some point my world is going to come crashing down around me.’ Beaton pulled the blanket from his bag and spread it across a large rock in a niche cut from a wall. He tied the end of the twine onto a rusted chisel head he had found and rammed it into the ground. He cut the twine and stuffed the ball into his duffle coat pocket. Wedging the handle of the torch between two rocks so that the beam was cast up towards the ceiling he set about assembling the camping stove on the floor at his feet. He twisted the dial on its side and heard the sound of the gas hissing from the valve. He took out the box of matches and after striking it several times a flame sputtered into life. Touching it to the crown of the camping stove a steady ring of blue flame sprang up. He took the can opener and started to work the mechanism around the rim of a tin of ravioli.

‘Maybe I am having a nervous breakdown. I’ve read about thinks like this. Retreats where middle aged men go off into the wild and sit in dark steaming tents around hot stones. I’m too young for that surely. Maybe I am losing my mind.”

He levered up the corner of the tin and balanced it on the cooking stove. He adjusted the gas, turning the heat down low. ‘No wonder your still single Beaton.’ He was actually talking aloud to himself. He was surprised at first to hear his voice fill the open empty space of the tunnel. It wasn’t something that he was aware of even doing at first but for some reason it was easier to do here, alone in the dark. His voice bounced and echoed around the cave walls like the thoughts bouncing inside his skull. He felt quite comfortable sitting in his stone niche. The cold was eased somewhat by the heat of form the stove. He stirred the contents of the can with a fork, he licked the fork clean, it was till cold, the taste was metallic. ‘Maybe if I had tried to change, maybe Marie might have found reason to stay. No, no she was always going to go. I was too cruel to her, no woman would have put up with that. That house is like a shrine to Marie. You just went straight back to work and carried on like that. Like everything was the same. You didn’t really expect to keep going about like that. I mean something had to give didn’t it and now your sitting here, in a fucking hole in the ground pondering it all. Well Beaton are you really surprised at how things have turned out. Are you?’

The ravioli was boiling fiercely around the edge of the tin, spluttering hot tomato sauce onto his trousers legs. He hadn’t considered how he was going to lift the tin from the stove so he switched it off and waited for it to cool.

‘So what are you going to do, you’re going to have to face going back to work at some point. There’s the bills to pay and the mortgage’ He started to feel depressed just thinking about it. ‘My life is sham’ he shouted. ‘My life is a fucking sham.’

The words hung in the dark and dissipated back into the silence that preceded them. These tunnels had been cut out years before Beaton was alive and they would exist years after he was gone. There was something frightening but also reassuring about that. He poured out a cup off coffee from the thermos, it wasn’t as hot as he would have liked but the warmth felt good inside of him. Picking the things up from the blanket he put them all back into the rucksack and pulled the blanket around him. Using one of the blankets corners for protection, he picked up the hot tin and forked hot lumps of ravioli into his mouth. When all of them were gone he drank down the tomato sauce. When he was finished he wedged the empty tin can into a crack in the wall. He wiped his mouth on the blanket covering his shoulder and huddled into his corner with another cup of coffee cupped in his hands beneath the blanket. He sat like that for some time staring up at the ceiling where the torchlight was framing a portion of the rock. He was already tired from the past two days he had not slept much and the cold damp air made him feel weary. After a while he ceased to watch and with his eyelids flickering shut his head fell forward and he was asleep. He felt snug inside the small space made between the space of his pulled in knees and his hunched over shoulders. His hot shallow breath and the steam from the coffee warm against his face.

It was a bleak and desolate scrubland. The scorched black earth was peppered with the charred black straws of the burnt meadow. The baked ground stretched as far as the eye could see. His legs moved beneath him picking a route between the burnt clumps of grass that stuck up like roasted pin cushions, his feet were shoeless bleeding and sore. His skin was streaked with the greasy black sweat marks from the falling dust and cinders that drifted in a vast cloud above the valley. He had no plan, no direction, his only thought was to flee the burning red glow, that even now so far behind, still warmed his neck and shoulders. He rested against the blackened stump of a tree. Its charcoaled flesh, pared open, cracked and cubed by the intense heat. He knew that everyone must be gone, nothing could have survived and yet he was still alive. There was a low flat building up ahead, he hadn’t seen it at first because it was half set into the side of a low depression in the landscape. As the ground sloped downwards he was able to walk out onto it’s rooftop. The building was round, there was a square hatch cut into the centre of the thick concrete with metal rungs leading down. Leaning over the edge he peered inside the bunker. Small eyelets in the wall let a little light filter through into the chamber. The floor glistened with a thin layer of slurry, a mixture of blast dust and drowned out embers. He didn’t go in, he had found enough scattered teeth and pieces of charred bone to know what he would find no one inside. He rounded the side of the building, the hard packed earth dropped away like steps that led to a stretch of pebbles and a winding sandbank. The dry dirt crumbled and sheared away beneath his feet as he slid into the river bed. The water had boiled away leaving a white crusted tide mark. A ghost of a river now gone. He followed the path of the river bed, keeping to the shadows cast down from the valley side, coveting the left bank. He meandered this way for quite a time. He was thirsty, his lips parched and blistered, his tongue dry and swollen. Soon he was not even aware of his surroundings he was moving over the landscape like a wind blown spec. He knew that the end must be near at hand but it was the deep rooted instinct for survival that kept his soul and his body attached by that thin golden thread.

It was a small pale hand that rested in his palm. It tugged and pulled at his arm, encouraged him to stand. He followed the child where he was led, it did not concern him or feel strange that this Golden haired boy, dressed in white robes, should have rescue him from near death. He walked, eyes closed and head bent, the child’s hand like a cool pebble resting in his hand. The gentle tug on his arm reassuring him that he was safe. They walked in this manner for some time. When he opened his eyes again they were approaching a cliff of black volcanic rock. Rough steps had been cut away and led up to a wide plateau. Once upon the mesa, the silent barefooted child ran on ahead. The young boy motioned at him to follow as he disappeared from view. Confused at first by the vanishing apparition, he walked to where the boy had beckoned him and saw steep steps leading down into the bowels of the black clastic rock.