Elysium. Part Two (5 page)

Chapter Fifteen
.

South-easterly wind.

Twelve knots.

Selina slowly closed the hatch as she read through the letter addressed to Dr. Camberwell. The page was covered on both sides in a small script that made use of every inch. She had been reminded constantly about the sin of waste since coming to the village, though this page was an astounding testament to it. How must the author have felt to have scribbled out so much of the text in their attempt to get it right?

‘Are you ok down there?’ She heard Priya call, and she folded the page and slipped it beneath the cord around her waist. She had no idea what the contents of the letter meant, though she knew without doubt that Priya would use it as an excuse to escape Mortehoe, and she wasn’t prepared to go through that again. Not just yet.

‘I’m just coming,’ she replied, ‘you know, I’d really be happy if you stayed here with me, this place is too big. It scares me at night.’

Priya was touched by Selina’s tenacity, and they finished the bottle before heading into a calm pink evening toward the pub where the villagers continued their erratic stream of questions.

Tinder North sensed the irritation growing in Priya, and stood to announce his opinion that they had answered enough for one day. He requested people allow ‘the girls’, as they were known collectively, to finish at least one drink unhindered. Reluctantly his words were adhered to, and Selina crept to the bar while Priya gave a curious bow before joining her.

‘
Strange isn’t it?’ She whispered, her hand draped across Selina’s shoulder.

Selina concurred, slurring her words. ‘I can’t believe we’ve found this place. It’s like when... Cortés discovered El Dorado!’

Priya was in the unfortunate position of being half-draught and choked on her drink. Selina looked confused, then tried to subdue her giggles, and before long they were in tears while the rest of the pub looked on, bemused. Betty appeared at the bar and asked what the joke was, and Selina wiped her eyes. ‘Nothing,’ she replied sincerely, ‘I just can’t believe we found this place. It’s amazing.’

Betty frowned, though it was difficult not to smile, and Selina turned back to Priya.‘Let’s get one thing straight.’ She garbled, her pale face growing rosy, ‘If we’re going to live together you need to be comfortable with the fact that it’ll be me,’ she tapped herself on the chest, ‘who’ll be wearing the trousers.’

Priya smiled, still flushed from their laughter. She finished her wine before hissing through her teeth and winking, ‘I’m sorry, honey, I’m a giver not a taker.’

Betty listened to them with a scowl reserved for the sober judging the drunk, and shook her head at the conversation before leaving them be.

Eryn replaced her and pushed a rag glumly across the bar. They had come to know her quite well in the weeks after their arrival. Though considerate and amicable, she had a morose air about her, and was by far the most reserved of the teenagers in the village. They had been assured by others that this was exceptional to her normal character, that she was normally bright and engaging. Since both could recall, however, she had kept herself to herself and would exaggerate busyness, or try her best to leave the room altogether, especially if anyone tried to engage her in conversation.

‘Evening, Eryn.’ Priya said.

Eryn nodded in reply and smiled faintly, as though to do more would open an old wound.

‘What’s wrong, love?’

Nothing,’ she replied. The smile broadened, but her eyes remained sullen.

Priya smirked devilishly at Selina before disappearing into the next room. Moments later she appeared behind the bar.

‘No, you mustn’t…’ Eryn said, making sure her father wasn’t about. ‘Pa get’s mad if anyone else comes behind here!’

‘Where is he?’ Priya asked, her hands on Eryn’s shoulders.

‘Down in the cellar. He could be back any moment.’

‘Baron!’ Priya called across the room. Baron turned from a flirtatious conversation with Jocelyn Sayer as George stood between them like an intermediary - as though brokering a deal. Baron looked slightly affronted to see her behind the bar. ‘Come and fill in for a minute or two, will you?’ She gestured for Selina to follow. ‘I think our worldly wisdom is needed.’ He looked back to George, who offered a wink and nearly shoved him toward the bar.

Priya lead Eryn from the bar to the quietness of an adjacent room that was rarely used. Selina stood and followed, somewhat clumsily.

They sat her on a stool and regarded her with sympathetic expectation, Eryn looked back defensively, and then burst into tears. Selina took her in her arms and held her. She looked up at Priya, who rubbed Eryn's back and waited patiently.

Eryn strived to talk, though a month of suppressed emotion overwhelmed her. Selina ‘
shhh’d
’ her until the tears had dwindled.

‘What’s wrong, dear?’ Priya asked, and Eryn moved away from Selina’s neck, leaving a blotch of tears on her skin.

‘I’m sorry…’ Eryn said, wiping her puffed eyes. ‘I just don’t know who to talk to.’

‘You can talk to us,’ Selina reassured, touching Eryn’s hand. ‘You know you can.’

‘It’s pa… After what we did. He won’t let me out.’

‘What do you mean? He won’t let you out of the pub?’

‘Since he found out about me and Boen, he hasn’t let me out of here, and no-one’s seen Boen at all.’

‘Since when?’ Priya sat at a table and hooked her hair behind her ears.

‘Near a month. I didn’t mean to get him into trouble...’

‘But what were you doing with him that’s caused such a fuss?’

Eryn expurgated the events of the former month in a frantic monologue. The ambiguous death of Richard Kelly, the outsider Boen had seen, their night at the Marisco Tavern, the papers she had stolen from Red Sawbone’s room. At the mention of the papers she closed her eyes, exasperated. How could she have been so stupid?

‘Did they shed light on anything?’ Priya asked.

‘Nothing. It was so stupid. It’s just a load of numbers - like it’s something, I don’t know, banking details or something... And sketches of birds and letters about things that are meaningless.’

‘Your pa is punishing you for stealing?’

She cuffed her eyes and sniffed. ‘He is, though not for the papers. God, I managed to hide them before he returned home.’ She rolled her eyes and shivered somewhat comically, cursing. ‘If he thought I’d stolen from Lundy, if he thought we’d even been to Lundy... I don’t know what he would have done. He took a belt to me and hasn’t let me out, and that was because he thought we’d taken the boat on some kind of romantic jaunt. If he’d known about Lundy and the papers...’

‘And Boen?’ Selina asked. She suspected she hadn’t even encountered him since their arrival if he’d also been grounded for a month.

‘Baron teases that something terrible has happened to him, but no-one will give a straight answer.’

‘We’ll find out for you,’ Priya said, standing.

‘No, please. Don’t make it obvious that I was thinking about him. Pa wants to make me forget about it by working me to the bone.’

‘Jeez,’ Priya sighed. ‘The more I know about your father, dear, the more I dislike him. We won’t make it obvious.

‘We won’t ask tonight,’ Selina continued, ‘but we’ll find out for you nonetheless. Subtly.’

Eryn looked uncertain for a moment, and then hugged Selina, ‘Thank you. Boen was terrified his pa would find out but I ignored him. God knows what he did to him. I’m so bloody selfish...’ The image of the scars she had seen across his back brought new tears to her eyes.

Selina’s former thoughts of paradise were checked as Eryn held onto her fiercely. ‘I just wanted to know for sure what had happened to Kelly.’

For a moment Selina didn’t think much of the name, she had heard it several times during their stay in the village, and even more so in the last minutes of Eryn’s ranting. It wasn’t until that moment that she was reminded that she had been given Richard Kelly’s house to live in. She thought of stepping through the ivy laden door for the first time, Semilion telling her of its previous occupant and how pleased she would be if she loved books – the upstairs rooms were filled with them.

She hadn’t thought of it before, so consumed was she with stifling her fears of dead men hiding in the shadows, but Richard Kelly was the author of the letter she had found in her cellar. The man who refused to“play their final game”.

*

Semilion sat in the shadowed library, running his hands across his head in frustration. The books of his ancestors lay scattered across the table like a child’s fallen bricks.

One volume, nothing more than a spiral-bound notebook, titled Autumn Codec, was apparently the codes that they should use between September and November. Beneath it was a reporter’s notepad upon which was penned Butterfly Code, the codes they should use in times of satellite scrutiny.

He thumbed several pages of The High Tide Symbols; jot a note in its margins, then rubbed his eyes.

He was dumbfounded. He had never known about any of these. His father had never taught him any of it. He had only been interested in showing him the old-world news reels and broadsheets, and telling him how terrifying the governments of the outside world had become.

His grandfather had been concerned with teaching him how the world was nothing but a wasteland of corpses and plague, and yet his father thought it important he should know how the governments of the world were struggling to reclaim it. He wondered if it had anything to do with Red Sawbone. Had his father been trying to keep Semilion afraid of venturing out into the world and bringing Red down upon him?

He saw a note scrawled on one of the pages and he recognised the script as belonging to his father. He thought of him lying on the floor, blood on his lips, as Red held a length of wood over him. Since that day his father had been frightened to do anything that might bring Red back to Mortehoe. Soon after that he had shown Semilion the first of the newsreels.

‘This is the world, boy,’ he would say as he fastened the reel to the projector. He would douse the lights and a bright whirring image would appear across the cracked wall.

‘It’s all like that out there,’ he would murmur throughout the most gruesome broadcasts.

He recalled the first reel showing a street in New York. The reporter wore a thick bodysuit of some shiny material and a gasmask from which protruded black breathing apparatus, and at the bottom of the picture flashed rapid subtitles.

‘
This scene is the same the world over. Dogs, stray or otherwise, have been scouring the streets for several weeks now with a seemingly insatiable lust for prey, seemingly anything that moves. And, uh, don't worry, I’m protected by New York’s finest, here. They reassure me that their military grade carriers can withstand more than a little puppy power. James Eastern, NYNN
.’ He stood behind a police carrier, and suddenly the policeman standing beside him braced himself and picked up his battered Perspex shield. The camera fell sideways and rattled across the street as the cameraman, dressed in the same thick material as the reporter, fell into view – a Doberman scrabbling and gnawing at the unprotected area at the neck of his gasmask. The policeman raised his shield as several wild mutts scrambled over the bonnet and roof of the truck, sliding and sprawling in their frenzied charge. The policeman beat with his electrified baton while another, sitting in the driver’s seat, shot a handgun from his awkward position. A dog's head exploded, though the baton was having no affect other than inflaming the dogs ferocity.

When Semilion had wanted to look away his father had forced him to watch. The reporter had been confident he would be saved by the thick protective layer, and stood motionless whilst three dogs mauled at his arms and legs. The policeman protecting him was dragged down, his throat ripped out and the hand in which he held his baton savaged until his fingers hung in bloody tatters from broken bones.

The reporter tried to retreat back to the safety of the police carrier, his screams manic, but the driver inside drove away in a whirl of screeching fumes and crashed forcibly into a bollard. Dogs piled into the truck as the driver fell out the door and tried to run. They were on him in seconds, pulling, ripping, clawing, their bloody teeth sinking into a cadaver that no longer looked human.

The reel ended, yet there was more for Semilion’s young eyes to see, and all the while his father would remind him that this was what the world was like. ‘There’s nothing out there but this, boy.’ He said until Semilion could watch it no more. ‘You’re grandfather wanted you to believe that there was nothing but death out there, but look. See? It’s much worse than that.’

Semilion had believed him. He had never wanted to leave the comforts of Mortehoe if the world outside was nothing but roads of bones and carrion birds.

More footage, Semilion had shrank back from the projection on the wall, and although his father put his arm around him in comfort the grasp was too strong and forced him to look forward. It showed an alleyway from the vantage of a helicopter, it was full of dogs feasting on corpses in some ceramic-coloured Mediterranean town. They pulled at flesh and bone, filling their mouths and stomachs without hunger and vomiting when they could take no more. Military troops filed towards them, crouched and hesitant, before firing canisters from from squat guns, plumes of smoke arching lazily toward the grotesque feast. The canisters burst open in the alleyway, instantly consuming it in a cloudy yellow avalanche. Dark shapes could be seen writhing within the haze, and though this reel was silent Semilion could hear their desperate howls. The military advanced, filling the alley with grenades and rounds of shells.