Bumper Edition: Chapter 6 to Chapter 7

Spoiler Alert!

Please note that this is the most recent two chapters in the novel, The Marsh.

As it has been some time since the last updates (life has gotten in the way of my writing time) I will treat you, Dear Reader, to a sampling of two very powerful chapters.

Chapter Six:
Lose Yourself

Thackery Farm sat at the summit of a hill, looking out across the Marsh like a sentinel sent to watch the growing town of South Hethel.

Once, the picturesque view had touched an old man's heart and fed the pride he felt for his land. But that man was dead now, and the son who inherited the farm had sold all but a single field. He kept one tired, old cow and left the once-busy barn locked.

The barn resembled an aircraft hanger sitting on a quagmire of mud. Sheets of corrugated steel had been blown off or had collapsed inside. The building had served its purpose long ago, and now it slowly rotted like the old man's final crop.

The son, Liam Thackery, rarely used the land for agricultural purposes. Mostly, he thought of the land as a source of quick cash when times were hard. And there were certain practices that could only be done with seclusion and quiet.

He had come across a wonderful young woman while he was in the pub a year before. Her name was Kim. She was a petite, green eyed, dark haired wonder of a 27 year old woman. He couldn't believe his luck when they hit it off. She had been impressed by his muscle and tough talk. He discovered she had a son. He was bright, cute and the best behaved little boy you could ever wish to come across. His name was Shaun.

Shaun and Liam got on like grease and fire. The boy looked up to Liam like a father; he wanted to dress like him, talk like him and even had his hair cut the same. Soon enough, people began to comment on how alike they were and, when told they were not father and son, they responded with: 'Really? You'd never know.'

For Kim, the change in her life was dramatic. She had raised Shaun on her own for four years; bathing him, feeding him, changing him, teaching him. The burden had sapped the life out of her, and on more than one occasion she would fall asleep in the bath after he had gone to bed, as though the remains of her energy were seeping into the water. Through all of that, the thought of her little boy’s brown eyes gazing into her own, melted her heart. She could never have hated him for the burdens he placed on her, he was her son. And now, she was glad he would have a father.

The wonderful dream, however, had begun to crack and would soon shatter. Kim and Liam argued almost every night. Plates would be thrown, sending food careening across the room to eventually rain fire down on the kitchenware. And, on more than one occasion, Liam had hit Kim.

On nights like this, Shaun would sit at the top of the stairs, covering his ears and slowly rocking himself. He would watch their shadows moving violently on the wall and would flinch when something broke or one of them would rush into the hall.

One particular night, the couple was having an especially severe argument. Ornaments were swept from their homes in the lounge and thrown across the room. Kim and Liam screamed at each other, their voices breaking with the strain. Shaun sat, as usual, at the top of the stairs and recoiled as there was a loud crash. Kim cried out in pain.

She burst into the hall, searching for more ammo to throw at Liam, and then spotted Shaun. Concern melted the anger from her brow and she raced up the stairs to him. Kim took her son into her bosom and rocked him. Into his ear she whispered: 'Oh my baby boy...'

Liam exploded from the living room, his predatory eyes locked onto Kim and his face sharpened with fury. 'Get down here! I'm not done with you yet, bitch!'

Before Liam could pull her away, Kim squeezed Shaun tightly. 'Lose yourself, little Shauny, run away in that little head of yours.'

He did as his mummy instructed, and did so more often when they began to fight. He would crawl away into some corner of his mind and when he would return, all that was left was the carnage that the two adults had left behind.

A year later, Shaun and Liam were at Thackery Farm. It was raining heavily, the water thrummed on the steel roof like a stampede of horses' hooves. Shaun rather liked it that way, it dulled the whispers in his head so that he was not distracted by them.

Liam was working under the hood of an old Buick he had bought from an old lady in Northamptonshire. His blue overalls were stained with grease and oil. He kicked his steel-toe capped boots on the concrete floor to get the blood flowing again.

Little Shaun was sitting on a sack of feed, playing with plastic cars that he had won from a box of Cheerios. Over the racket of the pummeling rain he made engine noises and the sound of squealing tyres. He would play this way for hours, lining them up or zooming them round in long arcing circles, becoming hypnotised by the patterns. The games let him fall back a little from reality and that comforted Shaun.

There was a clatter as a wrench fell to the floor. 'Fucking hell!' Liam roared and kicked the Buick's bumper. He stood back from the car, his hands on his hips. He let out a long breath as he rolled his tongue in thought.

He turned round, a sinister smile played across his lips. 'Hey, Shauny boy.'

'Hi Liam,' Shaun replied, beaming.

'How would you like to play a game?'

Shaun gave this a little thought and then jumped to his feet. 'Okay. What are we going to play?' he asked with a shrug of his shoulders.

Liam looked about himself and spotted a coil of blue nylon rope on the floor. He picked it up and tensed it between his hands, it cracked under the strain. 'How about you're a secret agent and I've managed to catch you?'

'Yeah!' replied Shaun.

Liam gave the boy a crooked smile that crept over his face like a reopened scar. 'Now,' he said, 'I've managed to capture the legendary Shaun Osborne and I've tied him to the front of this...ah...combine harvester.'

Shaun smiled and went and stood in front of the old, rusting harvester, facing Liam.

But the older man laughed. 'No, Shaun, I think it would be better if you turned around.'

The boy frowned, but followed Liam's suggestion. With the rope, Liam bound Shaun's hands behind his back. The itchy nylon scratched at the boy's wrists and he moaned a little in discomfort. Once Shaun was firmly in place, Liam began to prance about behind him.

'You've done a lot of very bad things, Shaun,' Liam said in the cool tones of an interrogator. 'And for those things, we're going to have to punish you with the most terrible sentence of all.'

Shaun laughed. 'Oh no what is it?'

'The Muscle Monster's probe.'

Shaun giggled away to himself, but Liam's face was taught with intensity. His eyes were fixed on the boy’s backside. He came closer, his footsteps echoing off the steel walls. He pulled down the boys tracksuit bottoms and undid the flies of his overalls.

'Now pay for your naughtiness!' Liam shouted.

The pain lasted only an instant. It was suddenly dulled, as though he had been given an anesthetic, like the one he'd had when he had to have stitches in his head for cutting it on the kitchen floor. Then darkness began to grow from the edges of his sight, slowly creeping in until it took over everything. He heard and felt nothing.

Suddenly, with the crack of a huge switch being thrown, a spotlight appeared before him; a single, crisp circle of light that was perfect in its brilliance. Within it sat a huge leather armchair.

Shaun got to his feet and walked into the light. He ran his hands down one of the arms, following the maroon leather until it reached one of the lion heads that adorned either armrest. Its mouth was open in a tremendous, silent roar.

It was only then that he noticed the boy sat within it. He was younger than himself, perhaps three or four. Their hair was the same colour; a dark brown, flecked with the occasional sprinkling of blond.

The boy writhed within the leather, tossing and turning, struggling to break free of the invisible bonds that held him down. 'No!' he shouted, and then went on wrestling to break free. Like the crack of a lighting bolt his eyes popped open and he let out a scream that broke his voice, a cry of sheer torment and horror. The cry of a boy who's innocence had been shattered.

That cry hauled Shaun from his trance and onto the floor. The room spun like a cheap carnival ride. The boy's face was burnt onto his retina, scorching his vision every time he blinked, appearing like a red ghost before him.

Slowly, the face faded and eventually retreated back into his subconscious. Gentle, feminine hands gripped his shoulders and stopped the room from spinning, anchoring him to the spot. They guided him back to the couch he had been tossed from, and seemed to secrete calmness into his body.

'Easy now,' the woman said. ‘I want you to close your eyes and concentrate on your breathing. You have been through an awful lot.'

'What... what the hell did I see?' Shaun asked through deep breaths.

'A memory that has been suppressed in your subconscious, Shaun.'

'That was real?' Shaun's eyes were open now, staring at the psychiatrist. 'He did that to me?'

'I'm afraid so.'

'But...' the reality of it all was beginning to knit itself together in his mind, 'he was my best friend. I trusted him! I was a boy... just a little boy...'

'It's okay, Shaun. I'm going to help you.' The psychiatrist touched his arm again, warmth radiated from it. But he couldn't accept that contact any more.

'You don't understand, I don't want help. I want this all to end. I'm bored of being the world's fuck up. I know I killed those people now... the black outs. It makes sense. Do you know how it feels to wake up with blood on your hands and never know who you've hurt?'

She was struck dumb. What could you say to something like that? But it was her job to say something. 'You are not well, Shaun. You need help. Please, let me make you better.'

Shaun began to fallback into himself, his face becoming more and more blank. 'I want to go back to my cell.'

Imprisoned tears stung the corners of her eyes. 'Sure. I'll see you very soon.'

She gestured for the guard to take him away, but she didn't think for a minute that the restraints were necessary. For once in this man's life, he would gladly go back to that cell. He wanted the isolation, to be forgotten, to be away from those he had the potential to hurt.

Chapter Seven:
The Guyren

A monstrous tower of smoke, illuminated in a ferocious orange, clawed at the sky as if it were the arm of a hungry god. The plume rose from the bowels of a rugged hill rimmed with stone. At its base, a tunnel had been dug, forming a red eye that beamed into the night.

Figures, some gigantic with long, trailing arms, others, nothing more than children, ambled in and out of the tunnel. Their long shadows danced into the night, turning their forms into grotesque monsters.

Shuffling his feet with his head down, for he was too weary to raise it, was Joshua Stone, the boy who had been stolen from his own world by nothing more than a knife. He wore almost no clothes; all that remained were jeans that had been so frayed that they were now no more than shorts. His skin was stained with dirt and bloody scabs. Long scars on his back were reminders of his masters’ punishments.

Inside, he was numb. In the initial days, fear had overwhelmed him, almost driving him mad. He had seen terrible creatures, living nightmares that he had believed to be reserved to the boundaries of books. But here, in this awful place, with a sky he did not recognise, they breathed, and screamed and whipped, and fed upon those that fell. Yet, he was numb. He ambled as a zombie, unaware of his actions , unaware of the splinters that scraped his arms, drawing blood. They, the Manashe, had driven him to be no more than a drone, like the rest of the slaves that toiled here.

His back crackled as he picked up another pile of wood, leaving him a little winded. The wood itself was strange. It was almost black and aggravated the skin regardless of its abrasive texture. After adjusting the load he began his long march back toward the tunnel that delved deep into the hill.

Heat hit his face as he turned, as though it were the sun shining at him through this night. It took his breath away and he was forced to look down to catch his breath. His feet crunched through a thick layer of ash, which had reminded him of days spent playing in the snow. It fell from the sky in a constant torrent, sometimes in a blizzard, but never could it blot out the intensity of that heat.

Beside him, one of the giant slaves, like a wall of grey skin, let out a groan that rumbled the ground as it hefted a tree trunk onto its shoulder. Joshua jumped out of the way as one of its feet came crashing down, trying to balance its mighty load. After a moment the great beast began to amble on, its feet sending tremors through the ground.

He had managed to gleam from the screaming squawk of his masters, that these huge beasts were called Fremani. They spoke in a deep and rolling tongue that vibrated his bones as if they were tuning forks. He guessed that they must have been almost 12 feet high and five feet wide. Their arms, with muscles as big as boulders, would hang at their sides with hands that curved like the buckets from a digger.

But it was their eyes that had surprised Joshua, for they had none. Instead their grey lids had sealed shut over many millennia of evolution, for where they came from, deep under some distant mountain range, they had no use for them. Beneath the skin, the eyeballs rolled, searching for a light that they would never see.

Joshua made his way to the tunnel entrance, on either side stood two of the Manashe, the guards and masters of the immense fire that burned beyond the tunnel. Their hooked beaks protruded from beneath their black hoods. From their nostrils dribbled a black, oily liquid that occasionally bubbled as they breathed. Thick whips were coiled in their hands, ready for one of the slaves to trip or dawdle. Their long claws tapped with impatience as their eyes searched ceaselessly amongst the struggling slaves.

The Manashe to the right yawned, its black tongue lolling in its mouth, and then let out a terrible shrilling sound. It cracked the whip at one of the Fremani, with the ferocity of a thunderclap.

In response, the great beast merely growled with anger and sidestepped away slightly. Before the master could unleash its frustration upon any more of them, they passed into the tunnel, being drawn in by the breath of the fire as it stole air from the outside world.

A latticework of rope walkways looped above their heads. Manashe patrolled the length of the tunnel from their vantage point, occasionally cracking their whips and squawking commands down at their slaves.

The floor of the tunnel was a mixture of ash brought in from the outside and the bones of those who had fallen, now crushed into the smallest of pieces. It took five minutes to walk the length of the tunnel, made all the worse by the weight of the wood in his hands. Constantly, the heat of the fire increased until it was unbearable.

The tunnel opened onto a vast mezzanine of stone. Below the Guyren roared, its flames hungrily clawing at the air, buffeting the stone around it. It’s plume of smoke towered through a wide opening in the roof of the chamber. Heat radiated from the walls turning the entire hill into a great oven.

The slaves moved in a wide circle, edging their way to the edge before retreating back through the tunnel only to repeat their journey.

Joshua’s head swam as the heat made him nauseous, sapping his body of what little energy he had left, as though the fire itself fed from his very life. He resolved himself to keep moving, knowing that he would be whipped for stalling, for holding up the line.

The edge of the mezzanine appeared beneath his feet, the strength of the fire rumbled in the stone. He peered over the edge. The heat of the flames kicked his hair back. Almost losing his balance, he tossed the wood over the edge and pulled himself away. For a moment he believed that he had seen the flames reaching for him, forming hands that would grab him and pull him onto the mighty pyre. But then the thought was gone, he had moved on. The numbness overtook him.

The chill of the night was a relief, if only for a brief moment. Behind him, one of the Fremani sighed; whisps of steam vented from his nostrils and its shoulders seemed to relax a little. Joshua, busy looking at the Fremani, walked straight into one of the masters. He bounced back and hit the floor, as if the creature had been made of iron.

Joshua looked up at the Manashe, fear filling his body. The creature merely looked down at him, hate radiating from its golden-rimmed eyes. The creature opened its beak and spat at him. Quickly, Joshua got to his feet and trotted out of range of that terrible whip. For a moment, the Manashe maintained its hateful glare, and then went on looking over the rest of the slaves.

A horn sounded and the slaves stopped in unison. A little distance from the huge stockpiles of wood and trees, a series of stone tables had been set with large cauldrons heated with wood fires.

Whipped into another line, the slaves slowly ambled toward the food, with Joshua between two of the Fremani. Crouching on the rim of the cauldrons, their ash-caked claws gripping the hot metal, the masters served them their gruel.

The gruel was thin, almost more water than actual food, and it sloshed over the edge of the bowl as the master flung it from the ladle, caking the floor. Two slices of mould-ridden bread were thrust into Joshua’s hand by another of the Manashe, one hand tightening around the whip in its hand, clearly disgusted with being so close to any of the slaves.

Joshua sat a little way from the others, his buttocks sinking deep into the ash. He ate quickly, almost tipping the gruel down himself as he tried to gulp the food down. The bread he dropped onto the ground, where it would continue to rot or be carried away by one of this land’s horrid insects.
Joshua faced the Guyren, its orange glow grew into the sky and blotted out many of the stars.

For a moment, memories came back to him, and he remembered the sky of his home, of South Hethel. Many of the stars were hidden behind an orange veil of cloud and haze, only occasionally interrupted with the blink of a plane’s lights. They were similar these two skies, yet here in this place the stars were different, wrong, his mind told him.
In every direction, the silhouette of a range of razor-like mountains framed the sky, punctuating the difference between his home and this distant world.

He wept, for home was so far away, and he could think of no way to return, no way to escape the masters and their whips.

No way to see his family again.