“Where is she looking?” the boy thought to himself.
And as he stared and wondered, a figure bore down upon him as if escaping from Hell itself. The man was upon him, his bearded face grimacing and snarling, his black clothes flowing from the shadow.
“Bloody thief,” it screamed.
The boy cowered unable to move but was spared when, from beyond the grave, his father collided with the grave warden and they fell to the ground violently. The boy managed to move and hid behind the angel. He closed his eyes tight and held his hands over his ears, trying to stop the groans and snapping sounds. Until finally the boy could only hear his own breath in and out, in and out, in and out and a hand took his shoulder. His surprise quickly turned to relief as his father stood over him.
“We need to go, son; leave the tools,” he said.
The boy went to reply but the wound in his father’s stomach took his words. His father held his hand there but the wet red poured through his father’s fingers.
“ Bastard got me,” His father explained…
The journey back to the hovel by the docks was not an easy one. The boy’s father could only drag himself as his precious fluid poured. In the night of the city, the richer couples walking in the evening glanced at the father and boy and quickly avoided them. Whereas the two made their way home and closer to the slums, one or two less-desirables circled them like ravens ready to pick dead meat from bones. They saw the bloodstains left by the father, who was becoming more and more uncertain on his feet. However, he was a formidable size even wounded and anyone with sinister thoughts would attack him at their own peril. Then finally they made it home and as they entered through the broken and crumbling doorway, the father collapsed on the rag-sheet mattress.
“I’m done,” he mumbled, falling to fatigue. “I’m done, son.”
The boy kept vigil by his father’s side, unsure of himself if he did so from a misguided loyalty or to make sure the bastard died. The warm sun baked the darkness of the room, but this was nothing compared to the fever heat that came from the father as his blood soaked the rags and the untreated wound invited an infection. And infection came, grasping the father with deep sweats and cold shivers of an almost rigor-mortis-like chill. The boy wet a rag from the leaking pipes and doused his father’s brow. He pulled back the makeshift bandages and inspected the deep slice in his father’s stomach. Maggots had found their way in and they writhed at the feast before them. The boy did not recoil at all; instead he stared almost with indifference to the sight, to the smell It was a mercy when his father died after days of seething in agony. The boy sat watching the still lump in the room. He shed no tears at his father’s death, for his mother had taken them all. Now the boy only felt a numbness. He stayed that way until the sounds of the world outside fell silent and the sun was replaced by the moon. Again and again the moon and sun came and went. The boy watched as his father’s skin turned green. A rat came from an unknown corner. That curious creature sniffed and nibbled at the dead man’s fingers. The boy made no attempt to stop it. Eventually hunger and thirst reminded the boy he was alive. The boy came to realise it was now the time to begin to look after his own well-being, before thirst or starvation claimed him. He was alone and therefore for survival’s sake, he would need to be able to provide for himself. The boy had seen children dragged kicking and screaming into the workhouse. Behind those high stone walls topped with razor wire and the serious black gates. Just as he had seen children pulled limp and silent from chimney stacks. He had heard stories of children working with the new weaving machines and losing limbs to their hungry spindles and threshing metals. His mother had always promised he would not go the same way. He would therefor take what his father had given. The only thing he had given him. He had taught him to steal the secrets of the dead.
He wandered a gas lit cobbled street and no one paid him any heed; it was as if he was no longer alive at all. And that moment the world seemed to melt away and he found himself in the cemetery watched by only the dead and the stars. Of course he stood in front of the stone mother angel and he wondered if his mother looked down on him from Heaven or his father looked up from Hell. As the boy longed for the beautiful stone angel he began to be lost in her eyes. Not that they were any different from the first time he saw them, but now he saw something else in them. What were they seeing? he wondered. Those blank white marble orbs were staring at something behind him. Turning, the boy could only see the trees and the gravestones hiding in the dark. He wandered. A cool breeze shook the plant life, and uncovered what the angel knew to be there already. The mausoleum was an age older than any of the other tombs in the cemetery. The stone was once white but time had turned it moss grey. The entrance was an oak door that sagged under the weight of ivy that choked and grew over the stone pillars either side of the door.
The boy had to push branches to one side as he approached. It was as if the trees themselves were trying to deter him from his path. The boy could not be deterred and the scratching of the trees was nothing to the pain that fate had already inflicted upon him. He reached out, pulling the ivy from the door. The plant resisted but was torn aside nonetheless. The wind blew harder and the trees shook harder as the boy pushed at the creaking doors. They opened with no resistance. As the boy took his steps into the tomb the wind howled.. It sounded like a mother crying.
The tomb itself had an instant chill to it. There was moonlight seeping in from holes in the ceiling, giving the stone a grey misery. In the centre of the tomb, a stone coffin lay broken and open. It seemed that the boy was not the first to come looking for treasure. He was surprised at how fate had led him to the tomb only for his curiosity to be rewarded with disappointment. At the moment the boy turned to leave, the shadow flowed from the corner and gripped the boy, holding him in the air. The darkest of things holding the boy was at one time a man. That same-said time had ravaged the creature of its flesh. Clearly it was dead, yet it stood straight holding the boy; its eyes had long gone, but it stared at the boy through empty sockets. The sight before the boy was so far beyond the world he knew, that all fear was replaced with awe.
The dead man moved with the grace of dried twigs and leaves. It was barefooted and dressed in shredded rags. It was bald save for a few strands. When it spoke it sounded like urn ashes blowing on a storm.
“Boy? Why you here, boy?” it asked. The boy answered clear and true; he had no fear of this ragged beast. He had seen the death of a loved one and the death a hated parent. There were no horrors in the entire world or the next that could compare.
“I came for your secrets; the dead have no need of such things,” he said with defiance.
“Don’t we? Do I look dead to you, boy?”
“Yes, although this is not a true death. I have seen a true death.”
The dead creature laughed a rotten laugh, its breath a rancid stench. It slowly lowered the boy to his feet, before kneeling with a creak before him.
“Are you not scared, boy?” it asked.
The boy wondered if he should be and searched his inner soul for even a hint, curious he felt no fear at all.
“No, I feel nothing.”
“Why?” the dead man wanted to know.
“I have lost everything. There is nothing more that would cause me more upset.”
“How?” the creature wished to know.
“The Consumption took my mother’s mind and I watched as the river took her body. My father taught me how to search for the dead’s treasures. But I found only an undead thing. Like my father’s life, his teachings amounted to naught.”
The dead man pondered the reply. Its fleshless face wrinkled as if trying to understand. The dead man seemed to reach a decision. And it spoke. “Are you alone, boy?”
“Yes.”
“And you want my secrets, boy? Do you truly want my secrets and will you accept them as they are?”
“Yes,” the boy replied without hesitation.