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

He passed through the deep cut in the escarpment and came to a large bright room. The child was waiting at the bottom of the stairs for him. They were standing in an immense room as large as a hangar or a warehouse. It was lined from floor to ceiling with white rectangular tiles and it was so bright inside as to be painful on the eyes. There was no obvious source to this white light which reached every corner of the expanse. Small partitions at even spaces ran along two opposite walls. In the middle of the floor was a dividing barrier about six feet in height, like something you might find in the centre of a shower room. It appeared to act as a screen to obscure the view of the opposing cubicles. In each separate station stood a man. Each man pulled on a heavy manacle, the links as large but thicker than a horseshoe. One end of the chain was shackled around a wrist whilst the other end disappeared into a round hole in the facing wall. These tethers appeared to run over and above their heads to be met by the hands of another man standing fettered to the opposing wall. As they pulled on their irons as if in a tug of war, a tension was created in the air above them. The chains running in parallel lines across the length of the ceiling were like the beams of a roof. Suspended, as if on a colossal hammock, was an immense wooden purlin. He couldn’t see for sure but he knew somehow that its surface was carved, like a totem pole, with hideous monsters. The ancient chiseled wood the colour of burnt umber. Its skin tattooed with the faces of ghastly medieval gargoyles, intense, winding and frightening in its unnatural intricacy. It hovered above, an idol to be feared and worshipped. The child led the man to an empty station. The slack coiled links of the chain on the floor looked too heavy to lift. ‘Where am I ?’ he asked. ‘What is this place to which you have brought me?’ The child, with a serene smile stretched across his white teeth, closed his eyes and stood like that for a few seconds. He had not said a word to the man since he had met him at the river bed.

‘This is hell’ laughed the cherubim ‘ and hell will be your new home.’

 

It was the scream that woke him. A high pitched screaming noise. Opening his eyes seemed to have little effect it was as dark with them open as it was with them shut. Maybe he had dreamt the scream altogether. He felt disorientated and frightened. His crotch was wet, he stood up banged his head. The cup in his lap clattered on the floor and was lost. He was in a cold sweat and he felt feverish. The nightmare had been vivid. It took him a while to remember where he was. He waited for his eyes to adjust but the only light came from the orange pin prick of the dying torch bulb. The anaemic glow of the metal filament waning. He must have slept for some time for the batteries to have died. He reached down and felt for the torch handle. He pulled it out from between the rocks . Unscrewing the back he felt the two large cylinders slide from the tube into his hand. Gripping the torch between his legs he felt for the canvas bag, his hand sifting through piles of dust and rubble.

‘Where are you, where are you damn it?’ His other hand spilt the batteries and the screw cap they were holding. ‘Fuck.’ He hissed the word then froze, still, like a statue. Something was moving towards him.

 

 

Emma had got up and dusted herself down, the fall had taken her by surprise but she had found what she was looking for. The garden twine was wrapped around the stump of the charred root. She put away her umbrella and stashed in between the twisting root limbs She picked up one end and following it with her eyes, saw that it disappear into the darkness.

‘So that is where you have gone.’ She let the twine run through her fingers.

It was all silence and darkness. It was slow going. Her sense of touch, the only way to understand her surroundings.

‘What are you doing down here, what do you know about my Jonathan?’

Crouching down as if negotiating a low doorway, she hesitantly moved forward, edging along, a few small footsteps at a time. With one hand she lightly lifted the thread whilst with her other arm she made wide sweeping scanning motions backwards and forwards in front of her body. The twine began to tighten somewhat, it was pulled high against a sharp turn in the tunnel wall. She kept close to the rock face as the mine rounded to the left. She stopped, ducked low.

‘What was that, I saw a pin prick of light, he must be close.’

Emma heard shifting, cracking noises like sand being ground into a hard surface and then the light died. There was some muffled cursing close to her left ear, not more than a few metres up ahead. Her heart was racing.

‘I’ll get a little closer to hear what he is saying then I’ll wait till he leaves and follow him.’ Reaching out both hands she touch the cool curving facade of a vast boulder. Leaning her weight onto it she crept along its perimeter making sure every step landed and settled softly and surely. The corner turned sharply and she was forced to step up onto a flat rock in order to keep to the edge of the wall. She bowed her head to fit into the recess in the rock.

‘This is a good place as any to wait.’

She reached out her left hand to steady her self as she crouched into a more comfortable position. Her hand came to rest on something soft, not expected. she pulled it back quickly and loosing balance tried again. Her fingers pressed against the soft flesh. She felt the hard angular bone resisting underneath the skin. Her mouth sucked in air but she failed to scream. She was sprung from the ledge and she was falling, falling, down towards the ground. A flash of white light exploded behind her eyes as her head was jacknifed sideways, wrenched away from her right shoulder as her head hit the floor. The neck folding cockeyed underneath her body with a load cracking sound.

 

Maybe it had been the confusion of waking from the dream combined with the feeling of a separation from his senses cause by his isolation in that darkness. Whatever the reason, it appeared to Beaton that his fantasy was being fulfilled.

‘It was just as I had imagined it would happen, like in the darkness of the train carriage with the people at my mercy, not knowing I was there.’

It was as if this body, this life was given to him in the darkness, a gift from God. He shoved at the body in front of him. He heard it fall to the ground, there was a bright snapping noise like the sound of a dry branch being broken under foot. Frantically patting at the floor blindly with his hands till he found a large piece of stone. He felt along the body till he reached the face, bringing the rock down, once, twice, three times. He slipped his hands around the neck but he could feel from the jutting bone, that the neck was already broken. There was no point in throttling what was already dead. He sat panting on all ours above the body, he felt spent. It was not a sexual feeling he did not feel aroused by the thought or the act of killing. It was the feel of a life beneath his hands that excited him, not death. That he had the choice to give or to take but it was always more satisfying to take. When the adrenalin had left him cold he searched the ground for the twine that led the way out of the cave. He pulled it taught in his left hand and holding out his right arm, began to feel for the wall to steady his way. At times he scrambled like an animal on all fours when at points the surface of the cave became to rocky to run across. Even when he had seen the dull light of the entrance chamber ahead he did not slow down. Only after he had climbed the loose dirt bank and was out into the open did he collapse onto the ground to pause for breath. His mind was reeling, he was in a state of utter confusion. From dreaming to waking, to fleeing, it had all seemed to have taken barely a few seconds and none of it made any sense in his mind. He thought about his raincoat stashed behind the rock but he was to freaked to return. ‘Who was inside there, what did I do?’ He picked himself up again ‘I have to keep moving, move, move.’

He was unsure as to where he was going exactly. The sunlight was fading and the snow stood out a pale blue against the black trees. His only concern was to head towards the road.

‘Get out of the woods, get out of the woods.’ he repeated it over and over to himself. His clothes became snagged on old bramble bushes as he pulled himself through shrubs and vaulted over the fallen trunks of trees. He carved his own pathway through the dense undergrowth until he burst free of the tree line and over a steep embankment that hugged the road. He sat there on the tarmac a little stunned at having not seriously hurt himself. There was a car coming down the hill towards him. He quickly stood and turning his back on the beam of the headlights he walked as casually as he could downhill. The car slowed to pass him and then picked up speed. The red tail lights dimming from view. He set out into a jog his skin burning hot beneath his coat. He felt the sweat slick on his chest sticking to his shirt. In a few minutes he was at the base of the hill. He knew that he was a mess and he could feel the long red welts on his hands and his face start to sting as they rose.

‘I can’t get a bus, I would look to much of a sight.’

He walked the main A road back into town. It took him well over an hour but he didn’t seem to notice. There was plenty for him to think about. The cold crept into his body and soon he was numb.

‘What have I done, I don’t know what just happened up their.’ It was only when he had reached the front doorstep that he remembered. ‘My fucking door keys’

 

Hollis Bergan had just started the evening shift. She was happy to get out of the house. Leo and Greg had been driving her crazy all afternoon until her mother had arrived to take the reigns. She had been late in again and she could tell by Steve’s expression that he was pissed off with her. She dumped her bag in the locker room. Steve was waiting when she came out.

‘Don’t you look at me that way Steve, I had some...’

‘Child care issues, every week it’s child care issues’

‘Wait till Carys has got her own, then you’ll understand.’

‘I’ll understand when you turn up on time for a change. You know that you’re gonna get in a whole lot of shit with Coxy if you keep this up.’

‘Yeah, Yeah, I know. What are you in a hurry for anyway, to be told to fuck off by a gang of ten year olds. I get enough of that at home’

They walked