Amidst the Falling Dust (The Green and Pleasant Land, Volume 2) Read online

  Chapter 8, The Disfigured Dream

  Just when you think things can't get any worse, any more strange and cruel, they inevitably do. The past twenty-four hours have been bizarre and uncomfortable. We avoided the cadavers. Trowler made up a makeshift stretcher, which nice guy Dan Sutton offered to help carry.

  The strangers condition did not change, his every breath was a struggle, he would occasionally open his eyes, though after my first encounter I avoided going anywhere near him. The dream which had seemed so real had been reduced by my feeble mortal mind. Now just scraps and shreds remained, torn pieces of metaphysical cloth which I could not weave into anything coherent.

  We spent an uncomfortable night in the undergrowth. I did not have the heart to ask where we were going, I don't think anyone knew. Everyone seemed to be undergoing some sort of psychological adjustment. The robust and unwavering Tasker was becoming withdrawn, as if even he was beginning to sag under the weight of our predicament.

  We walked all through the next day down the valleys of the Lake District. I would say we were lost but it is difficult to be so when you don't seem to have any true destination in mind. Morale is gone, burned up with the car and all our kit. Boiled bark and muddy water do little for the appetite.

  Darkness has fallen again and we have found a cave, nestled in some trees at the bottom of a large stony hill. My mind brings forth an echo of the past, it tells me that perhaps we are near Scafell, but such memories are unreliable and of little use in the here and now.

  Patricia looks like she is asleep, or pretending to be so. So does Mark, I envy them. Tasker is apparently on guard though to be truthful I cannot see him and he might have just run off into the darkness hours ago for all I know.

  Trowler and Sutton. They are very much awake. They are starting to disturb me. They are knelt over the green eyed man, they have been for hours. Their heads are bowed and their hands rest upon the dirt. They say nothing out loud but I am sure as can be that I can hear muttering and murmuring coming from the triad. Some conversation to which even the shadows would have to lean in if they wished to be privy to it. Against Taskers insistence a small fire lingers there at the entrance to the cave, another sign of his eroding authority.

  My eyes begin to droop. My head dips every now and then and I can feel the blessed burden of sleep about to take me away for a time. But just as I am about to succumb I look up one last time. I start to shake and sweat. My heart flutters, my blood pounds. Sitting on a rock only a few feet from me, there is a cadaver.

  It is a brutal looking beast. Though I am surprised by the neatness of its attire and its apparent lack of a desire to immediately start eating me. A grey shirt and trousers it wears. As I look on I start to notice other anomalies that do not fit with the profile of the living dead. Bandaged stumps protrude from the end of its shirt sleeves. And though its face is a lipless wreck that has had the humanity carved from it with a blade the eyes are pure and clear, and they stare steadily at me with the contemplative look of one who lives.

  “Who are you?” I whisper.

  “A man once, like you Patrick, now, a ghost perhaps, a ghost of the flesh,” its voice is halting, the sounds warped. The inside of his mouth reveals a torn stump of a tongue which slides uneasily over broken teeth. Even so, I can pick out the words.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “What do you have to give?” he slurs. My eyes glance over at the green eyed stranger. If Trowler and Sutton are aware of the conversation taking place they give no outward sign.

  “Him?” I query.

  The mutilated man nods but says. “He is not yours to give, which is much a pity, a great deal of change might come to the horrors in front and behind us if that was not the case”.

  “What did he do?” I ask. The man considers the question.

  “He broke the cycle, he broke me, and he...” the sentence cannot be finished, the man tails off.

  “What is your name?” I quiz him uncertain of what to do, and curious as to how he seems to know me.

  “My name is Robert Locklear.” The sound of the name sends a chill through me, I have a memory, a faint recollection of a dream, a dream of ravens biting at the dead, it is gone as soon as it arrives. We sit in silence for as long as I can bear until the discomfort prompts me into more questions.

  “I have another question,” Locklear nods.

  “What do the words 'Fey Le Nar raen' mean?” I can tell by the wide eyed stare that I have surprised him, there are still things he does not know.

  “Where did you come by those words?” he asks me. I tell him of the encounter in Stefan Kesslers office. “Raen, as a literal translation means rise, as for the rest,” before continuing Locklear looks around, assessing the shadows for who might be listening. “The Fey Le Nar, is a group...whose history goes back further than any known to the established civilisations of the world”.

  My question is answered but the revelation has caused a dozen more to take its place. I am trying to decide which one to ask next when he interrupts my decision making with a query of his own.

  “Tell me of your travels Patrick, tell me of how you came to be at Edenpark and all that befell you there, perhaps there are yet more secrets to be shared between us.”

  I told him, about all that had taken place since we left the carrier. He nodded through most of it. Then I got to the command centre, to the topic of the satellite feed, to the images which we'd seen which I'd been reluctant to share with anyone, even myself. He leans in close at this point. “We saw the world, for just a few moments, we saw the storms. Dark clouds, swirling hurricanes that stretched from one side of the planet to another, lightning flashed constantly. Vast clouds of ash obscured the world, where the cloud thinned we saw fire, fires that engulfed entire nations. The planet, the planet is dead Robert Locklear, the world has been swallowed by a maelstrom of fire and ashen darkness...”

  “All except here”, he finished.

  “All except here”, I repeat. “Why? The abyss has smothered all life from the face of the Earth, all bar Britain, the clouds hovered around our land, but they do not cross the seas, they do not breech some damned, blessed barrier which prolongs our agony.”

  “This is a sacred land, Patrick, a special land.”

  “What does any of this mean, why are we still here?” I implore him for some answers. Locklear stands unsteadily. I can see the bulge of heavy bandaging on his knees and he grunts in pain as he staggers towards me. A bloody stump lays on my shoulder as he leans in close, I lose my gaze in the horrible gaping wounds on his face, fascinated and reviled in tandem.

  “Patrick, Patrick, Patrick” he whispers in a distant voice over and over and over.

  “Patrick” shouts Patricia and I come to. She is leaning over me as is Mark Kirby. Of Robert Locklear there is no sign.

  “Whats wrong?” I ask,

  “You were screaming in your sleep”, says Patricia. I can see Tasker standing near the entrance to the cave. I climb to my feet shaking the sleep from my head. Light has started to creep over the horizon, winding its way down through the canopy and into the eyes and minds of we surviving few. What the day will bring I do not know. But all of a sudden Trowler and Dan Sutton pick the stranger up on his stretcher and walk out of the cave with him. As they pass I am certain I can see a smile on the face of the green eyed man. With little choice or alternative the rest of us follow them off into the woods.