Heal the Sick, Raise the Dead - By Jacob Prytherch
1
There Were Three
The weather and choppy water that surrounded the dark granite rocks of the island had done its work on the limb, causing the flesh to hang in ragged greying strips from the bone. Despite the damage it was still clearly identifiable as human; there was even a hint of nail varnish left on the largely blackened fingernails of the broken hand.
Marcus chewed his lip, the wind rustling through the folds of the grimy coat that hung off his broad shoulders as he peered at the remains and prodded the skin with his boot. I glanced at him and saw little more than curiosity in his twinkling blue eyes. The sea spray clung to his forehead, globules on his curling straw-coloured hair. His young features barely seemed to register the harsh conditions of the island and he didn't seem to have aged at all since I had first met him, whenever that was.
Cato, standing on the other side of me, was almost the opposite. The spray of the fishing trips seemed to tear his skin raw, so much so that new creases and cracks appeared in his features almost daily. I would have felt sorry for him if he wasn't such a bore. He exhaled nervously. He was exhibiting his usual and deeply irritating trait of formulating his words before he spoke them, which made his tremulous voice sound almost alien, as if he were simply reading words off a page. His thinning, scruffy hair whipped around his face as he finally spoke.
“… that’s the third part today, isn't it? It... stinks.”
“Watch this,” said Marcus, his lip curling to bare his teeth in a crooked smile. He forced his foot down carefully, pushing through the muscle and skin like crepe paper. Black blood oozed over his boots.
“Oh please, I think you'll make me... I'm going to... don't!” said Cato, his voice fluttering and indistinct in the wind as he turned away, his face pale.
“Man up Cato, it's just skin, and other things. I could cook it if you want,” said Marcus, his voice in direct contrast to Cato's, a confident baritone. He stooped and picked up the body part. I blanched, imagining the feeling of the rotting meat in his hand. I turned away and followed Cato. The smell made me retch.
“Bloody hell, put it down,” I said, trying to keep the fish from breakfast from coming back up. It had been a bit rancid at the time but I didn't want to be sick, not again. It seemed that something or other on the island made me ill almost every day.
Marcus casually dropped the arm and wiped his hand on his coat, leaving a greasy sheen.
“You two are so dull, can't have a bit of fun can I? It's just meat. If we could get any beef here it would be the same. It's just a dead animal.”
“Woman,” I said, looking at the nails, “probably.”
Cato was right of course. It was the third part today, and over the last week how many had there been? Eleven, twelve… maybe more, all carrying different shapes, sizes, colours and states of putrefaction.
“I told you we should go back… we should have gone back earlier in the year when we still had a bit of sunshine,” said Marcus. He kicked a chunk of charcoal from the remains of last night’s fire and it skittered across the rocks before dropping into the foaming water, leaving a pockmarked trail on the stone. It slowly floated away, beginning a new journey, a little burned out skiff.
“Go back where?” said Cato, his voice rising. “I don't know where we are, do you?”
“Let's not talk about this again, you're both boring me. I'm bored,” I said as I kicked the arm back into the sea where it tumbled and rolled in the waves. I could almost imagine it grasping for a handhold on the rocks, trying to pull a body that it no longer possessed to safety.
“I know why you're bored. I do. Marcus does. You're bored...” Marcus thrust his hands out theatrically, “because there's nothing here! We've looked at every inch of this place and the only house is ours. Well, I’m calling it a house but if we get another storm it'll just be a pile of wood, plastic and rust.” Marcus turned on his heel and started to walk back up towards the small house that clung to the side of the hillock behind us, crouched against the slowly blackening sky. He crushed damp heather under his feet.
“Yes but... granted... but... I still don't want to go,” said Cato, his small hand clutching at my sleeve as a light drizzle started to fall from the east. “My dad always said to stick with what you know, and we know the island.”
“Stick with what you know? That's not really a saying designed to further mankind now is it?” said Marcus hefting up a piece of driftwood and slashing wildly at the foliage nearby. It cracked and fragmented in the wind. “If we all 'stuck with what we knew' we'd never leave infancy.”
My teeth ground together as the bickering continued.
“Always arguing... I'm so tired of you all...” the words came out automatically, almost like the release of a deep breath after being submerged. No sooner had I said the words than I began to feel guilt welling up inside me.
Cato had stopped in his tracks. I turned back to see his face fall in horror. He must have known I felt this way; it can't have been a surprise. Maybe the surprise was the fact that I had said it, I had actually spoken the words. Cato hung his head and his shoulders started to shake as weak sobs racked his fragile frame.
Marcus came bounding down the slope from the house, fire in his eyes as his coat flared out behind him.
“What did you say? Tired of us all? All of us? You... you,” his finger jabbed me in the chest so hard I had to take a step back, “are tired of us?”
His nostrils flared as he spoke, a dab of spittle running down his lip. It flicked in the sea breeze, twisting away into the air.
“What will Perdita say?” he continued, stomping back off towards the house. “She dotes on you, you ungrateful wretch!”
The rough wooden door swung back slowly and out of the gloom stepped Perdita, small and pale. Her chestnut hair framed her face in a halo of curls and her grey eyes glittered with the beginning of tears. Her little blue dress fluttered in the breeze. Marcus rushed to put his arm around her tiny shoulders, and glared at me. I felt tears start to well up in my own eyes.
“It's true, I do, but... you feel tired of Cato, and he must feel tired of you... everyone gets tired...” I sighed, running out of steam, almost as if I was being dampened by the rain. “Sorry. I shouldn't have said anything, I won't leave you behind. I'm sure you wouldn't let me anyway.”
It was true for the most part, I was sorry, however Marcus merely scowled by way of a reply. The rain was starting to fall in bigger droplets now, splashing off the leaves of the trees as the clouds started to move across our small and solitary land, covering every inch from the top of the hillock peak to the low peat bog on the far side.
“Come on, inside,” said Marcus, leading Perdita by the hand back into the safety of the house. Cato slowly trudged past me, following them into the house. Its bowed timbers always seemed on the brink of collapse from their outside appearance but it had been skilfully constructed over the course of those first few painful and strange days.
I followed them with resignation weighing down every leaden step. There were so many things that jarred with this absurd situation, living with this dysfunctional “family”, for want of a better word, yet it was preferable to loneliness, surely.
It had been raining then too, almost relentlessly, all those weeks ago when Marcus had first pulled me to my feet, his strong arms righting me easily. I had been lying on the shingle, mutely counting the stones with my little finger, lost in a daze. He had hugged me close, warmed my soul, and set me straight.
Those first two days had been almost exhilarating, just him and I. He was brash and bold, full of a heady sense of adventure that swept me along with him as we built our shelter and explored our new home. We had cheered when we had found the washed up wreck of the fishing boat that would yield most of the timber for our house, along with many other useful items of survival. The large net and lifeboat in particular were invaluable assets and the smiles had never left our faces as we struck out for the sea, soon pulling in our first modest harvest of mackerel.
It was soon after, as we had boiled the fish in seawater on the rocky beach, that Marcus' strange nature had started to show itself. He had eaten voraciously, sometimes not even stopping to chew, virtually inhaling his food to such an extent that he had sometimes vomited, although this hadn't and still didn't seem to bother him, in the same way that a baby simply gets rid of what is making it feel ill before carrying on. If he went without food too long he would sometimes even begin weeping, huge sobs shaking his body as I hurriedly gathered a meal together.
Our carefree days ended when we had found Cato, huddled beneath a rock that we had overturned to search for treasure in a fit of childish glee. He had been cocooned in sand and water and his milky eyes had flicked open and looked into mine with a curiously weary expression. Already I had somehow disturbed and disappointed him, as we had clumsily helped him to his feet, naked and wrinkled as a dried fruit. He had soon begun his habit of constantly trying to set up rules and guidelines for Marcus, always being the first to pick fault with any of our machinations, even before we had started. We had clothed him in the rags we found strewn along the corpse of the fishing boat; old waders and work shirts. He now followed us like a lost mongrel, his observations and advice dragging clouds across the sun.
By this time the uncanny nature of the situation had started to tease questions from the back of my subconscious, though I had to disregard them from necessity due to the total absence of knowledge of what had come before.
The only time that Cato had released his grip on eternal pessimism was when we had found Perdita, hanging by her hair in the tall tree on the other side of the island, surrounded by mud and heather. Her face had been peaceful as she had slept, with her feet gently crossed and her arms resting by her side. Her dress had been too thin for the chill weather, though it hadn't so much as fluttered despite the wind that had been cutting across us from the north. Marcus had been his usual irrepressible self, running towards her as soon as he spotted the child, before jumping up again and again in the vain attempt to drag her down. Cato – abandoning his reticence this one and only time – had also bounded towards her, though his leaps had been noticeably less effective than Marcus', whose huge fingers had occasionally brushed her toes as he soared upwards. It was as if she had infected them and I must admit I had also drawn to her, and still was, as if she were a forgotten glorious dream or a long lost treasure suddenly unearthed. It was I who had suggested that Marcus lift Cato so that they could succeed in releasing her.
As Cato had reached up gingerly, boosted upwards by Marcus' broad shoulders, his hands had moved through Perdita's hair. The dark strands had released their grip on the branch, twisting and falling about her shoulders. The sight had reminded me not so much of a living creature but more of seaweed dancing in the ripples of unseen currents.
Cato had carefully held her as Marcus had lowered both of them to the ground, before her eyes had lazily fluttered open. She had said a quiet little “thank you”, the only two words we had ever heard her speak on the island. And when she had smiled all of my troubles and isolation had been forgotten and we had adopted her into our family.
Until now, despite the somewhat grim nature of my life, I wasn't too depressed. This was largely because I had nothing to compare my present circumstances to. I knew there was more out there than this decaying microcosm of an island, humans crawling from babies to children, leaping from children to adults, before collapsing towards death. I had once been with them all, before I had come here. I must have been, or else why would I have these memories? No, not exactly memories, more like a knowledge of society, without the accompanying knowledge of my own part within it.
Cato stumbled on a gnarled root and bundled into my legs, breaking my reverie. I helped him to his feet but he only frowned by way of thanks. The rain was starting to chill me, running in icy rivulets down my neck, so I hurried up towards the house. The door was swinging backwards and forwards, its handle held tightly in the impatient hand of Marcus.
I stomped the dirt from my boots and slipped inside, sidling past his accusatory stare. The door slowly closed as I knelt down by the blackened hearth and started to build the fire. Marcus didn't lend a hand, as he usually did at this time of the day, instead choosing to lean against the corrugated steel of the wall. The wind started to whip the raindrops onto the thin structure that surrounded us, a cacophony of water on metal. It made any conversation impossible, for which I was glad. I needed to retain some control over the situation.
We had started using an old boat hook (with the shaft broken off) and a piece of flint to start the evening fires. This method was nowhere near as easy as using a lighter, but the one we had found in the boat's cabin had run out not long after we had found it. The mouldy cigarettes alongside hadn't been salvageable – rotting in the mulch of a soft pack – but it wasn't a big loss. I had no idea if I smoked, or had smoked.
After a while the fire started to hold and a comforting warmth spread through the house's single dingy room. Salvaged blankets made up our bedding, while a couple of haphazard shelves held the few items of interest from our scavenging trips. The rain was starting to die down a little too, making the crackle of the burning heather audible. Marcus was idly scratching patterns in the earth with his fingernails, pretending to ignore me, until I finally spoke.
“All right... yes. Let's go tomorrow, head out to the... mainland. Or bigger island. Whichever.”
Marcus ground his teeth, his strong fingers cutting deep into the impacted earth with worrying strength.
“Is that all right?” I asked, pulling a blanket around my shoulders and swigging from a rusty canteen. The water on the island was probably the location's best feature, cool and clear from a spring near the summit.
“Are you sure you want us along?” Marcus said, his eyes cast resolutely down towards his pictographs. Cato shuffled his feet in his den of blankets and Perdita peered at me from across the fire. Guilt again twisted in my belly. They were my family and in their eyes, my own eyes, I had betrayed them. They relied on me to look after them, tempering Cato and seeing to Marcus' many wants and needs.
“Of course, of course I do.” The words were mostly true. For better or worse, they were all I had.
“If I don't want to go, I mean, what if... what if it's too dangerous? What if we're not wanted there? We need to keep ourselves safe, I always say that... everything at its time, everything in moderation...” said Cato. He looked away as soon as he had finished the sentence, obviously fearing rebuttal from Marcus or myself. No matter how many times he tried to correct us, it was always with a slight air of melancholy.
“We'll vote,” said Marcus, standing up and roughly clapping his hands together to clear the dirt. The sound was a thunderclap in the small hovel.
“All in favour of civilisation, interesting people and a life away from this forsaken latrine of an island say aye!” His voice carried deep oratory confidence, as if he were rallying the troops into a final push. He glared at Cato with eyes wide and bright, daring the small man to go against him.
Cato to his credit held out for almost ten seconds, his mouth noiselessly wording weak arguments, before he finally croaked a pitiful “aye.” Perdita simply nodded, her vote not necessary for a consensus but still welcomed by Marcus. He strode over to her and patted her gently on the shoulder.
“Good girl. Let's see what's out there,” he said, grinning broadly as his teeth flashed white in the firelight.
The morning was thankfully crisp and clear, the storm clouds having moved off during the night. After breathing the air for a few moments with my breath crystallizing in front of my face, I ducked back inside the house to gather the sack filled with our worldly possessions. It had taken a depressingly short time to fill. With it slung over my shoulder I started off down the small slope towards the beach, with the others falling into step behind me. Marcus was humming Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries under his breath, and I felt momentarily impressed with myself that I somehow knew the piece. I couldn't have told you who Wagner was, however. His name was just a word, floating like bread in the curdled milk of my mind. Milk and bread, was that good for hedgehogs, or not? What exactly was a hedgehog?
Cato led Perdita by the hand to make sure that she didn't slip and we soon reached the lifeboat, hidden away from the strong cross-winds behind a rock. I stowed the sack beneath one of the planks that made up the seats as Marcus started effortlessly pulling the boat towards the water, showing off his strength by only using one of his impressive arms. Cato helped Perdita board as it moved down the pebbles of the beach, lifting her onto a seat before stumbling and slipping alongside her. Marcus continued pulling aggressively until he was knee deep in water and the boat was afloat, whereupon we both climbed on board and picked up the oars.
“It looks so small from here, but it served its purpose, I suppose,” said Cato, staring wistfully behind us as we pushed against the incoming waves, the boat peaking and dipping over the grey foam.
“Your manhood?” asked Marcus sarcastically, his lip curling into a grin that could almost be considered handsome, if his comments weren't so uniformly ugly. He grunted to himself with the effort of rowing, before shrugging his coat off and letting the sea spray cool his body as he rowed. The cloth of his ragged shirt clung to his muscles as he powered us forwards. We didn't have a firm destination in mind on the mainland, as it was just a line of grey on the horizon at the moment. I hoped that as we approached it we would spot something, some landmark or town that we could head towards. There had to be something there. There had to be people.
Soon the island became a minute detail shrinking away to almost nothing, as if it were nothing more than a clump of floating detritus. When it had eventually disappeared altogether behind the horizon I finally and truly felt there was no going back. The thought was a release unlike any other I could recall. I sighed deeply and Perdita glanced at me, tilting her head to study my expression.
The rest of the journey was carried out in silence, the only sounds being the creak of the oars and the answering movement of the waves.
The outline of the land seemed barren at first, before blossoming with details. It filled the far horizon, greys and greens and suggestions of other colours. Cato leaned a little out of the boat to take it all in, his eyes narrowing as he concentrated. It looked to be a rocky coastline for the most part – all granite cliffs and tufts of clinging grass – but as Marcus angled the boat to the right a small harbour came into view, surrounded by ten or eleven buildings. They were low lying, stone, with tiled roofs in various states of repair.
“It looks deserted,” I said, as Marcus paused for a moment to catch his breath. The journey so far had been almost fourteen hours and there was the hint of twilight starting to creep into our periphery, leeching what little colour there was from the landscape.
“I think it looks dead,” said Cato, wriggling back into his seat and hunching down, pulling an oil stained blanket around his fragile shoulders.
“He does,” said Marcus, jabbing his oar into a mass of passing grey flesh. It erupted with gases, spraying rot and necrosis onto the surface of the water. It was the remains of a torso, with the right leg as the only limb still attached. The undulating water made it dance a strange marionette jig. The head was little more than a mass of stringy flesh hanging for dear life onto bone and tendon. Cato pulled Perdita close and hid her face within the blanket.
“Marcus, she doesn't need to see that,” I said, as the huge man sat back down, rocking the boat with his movement.
“There'll be a lot worse on the mainland, mark my words. I'm just trying to get her ready for that. We won't be able to keep her under a blanket forever,” he growled in reply, falling back into his rowing rhythm and pushing us towards land.
The harbour was for the most part empty. There was the remains of a rowing boat half submerged but still anchored, with only the prow still poking out of the waves, and beyond it there was a concrete ramp leading from the water up to the the top of the harbour. We couldn’t guide our boat directly towards it as a large battered and rusty van had been driven half way down it, tethered by a thick rope to a steel ring on the quayside. There was some sort of tall fence panel or planking attached to the back of the van, the top of which stood about a metre out of the water, blocking it off completely and forcing us to row up to a smaller docking platform further in. When we had pulled alongside the slick concrete, Marcus gingerly stepped out and tethered the boat, helping each of us out in turn.
As we carefully snaked our way up the drizzle soaked stone steps of the harbour, night truly began to fall. Marcus carried Perdita in his arms as if she were a baby and Cato struggled under the weight of our supplies, his breath wheezing and rattling in his chest. The last little bit of light from the sun winked at us from across the sea, before ducking behind the horizon and leaving us with the pitiful amount of moonlight that was forcing its way through the cloud cover. The rain began to fall again, solid and purposeful.
When we had cleared the steps I knelt down and fished in the pack, pulling out a glass jar holding one of our last remaining candles, wrapped in cloth. I had tied a matchbox to it with string but it only held two matches and as I opened the box my numbed fingers dropped one of the precious items.
“Butterfingers,” said Marcus quietly.
“What's butter?” asked Cato from somewhere in the gloom.
I quickly knelt down and felt around my feet, but when I finally spotted the match I saw that it had fallen in a puddle and was now useless. With one left, I crouched down against the wind, and gave a little prayer to whatever higher deity would be listening.
As I flicked the match against the box it fitfully flared into life. I quickly lit the candle's wick and dropped a few drops of wax into the jar, before gingerly placing the base of the candle onto the molten pool. My fingers protested as the flame burned my skin a little but I managed to keep the candle straight. I stood up and held the jar in front of me as I warily scanned our surroundings.
The spoils of humanity were everywhere. There were various mounds of papery mush all around us that presumably had once been newspapers, documents and books, discarded and left to decompose in the rain. Empty food wrappers, tin cans, and even electronics lay everywhere. I moved forward a little, pushing through the rubbish with my bare feet. Something caught my eye and I knelt down, wiping some grime from a plastic bottle of water. The label had long gone but the bottle was still sealed, so I passed it up to Cato, who opened it and passed it to Marcus. The huge man made to swallow the contents in one huge messy gulp but Cato wagged a finger, feeding him bit by bit, making soothing clucking sounds with his tongue. It occurred to me that Perdita and Cato rarely consumed anything...
“We need some food. Well, Marcus does. I'm not hungry,” said Cato, trying desperately to pull his ragged hood over both his head and face.
“You're never hungry,” I said, standing back up and trying to work out which of the nearby buildings was the best to head towards. There was still not a sound except for the rain and the occasional rattle of a tin can skittering across the concrete, nudged by the breeze. “I don't know how you keep going. You should be dead.”
Cato ignored the point. “Maybe we can start a fire, it would warm Marcus up.”
“If we start a fire, every person nearby will know exactly where we are,” I said, seeming to be the only one who had any inkling about how others would react to us, even though I had no idea if this knowledge was from past experience or fanciful musing.
“I'm cold and wet, lets get inside,” said Marcus, for his usual blunt part of the conversation. He was flexing his fingers in, out, in, out, as if crushing the head of an imaginary mouse.
“Yes yes, we should hide, mmm, very good,” murmured Cato. He had stopped walking and seemed lost in his own thoughts again. Annoyance bubbled within me.
“We can't just hide forever. Why did we come here if we're not going to try and find someone?” I gave the two men a nudge and tried to guide the group towards a likely looking shelter. A two storey cottage stood a bit behind the other buildings. It was protected from most of the elements and seemed a good place to start in our search for shelter.
As we drew closer, with our feet crunching on the gravel path, we saw that most of the windows were intact and the brickwork was strong. The door was good, solid wood, decades old, with varnish peeling off it like sunburnt skin. I placed my hand on the door handle, cast iron and freezing in the rain. I can't truly say why but despite my hope for some other human contact, I paused. The unlimited possibilities of the closed threshold overwhelmed me.
“Come on, open the bloody thing. I'm tired of this rain,” said Marcus, grabbing the handle from me. It was unlocked. The door flew inwards, slamming against a small table and scattering photo frames, knocking a vase onto the dingy carpeted floor. The shrivelled plant it had once held flung itself free and fell in a halo of desiccated earth.
The gloom inside almost carried a silence with it, as the sound of the rain became deadened to my ears. I cautiously pushed my arm into the darkness, the candle inside the jar feebly fighting against the shadows. Marcus and I crept forwards as Cato stood wringing his hands at the entrance and Perdita craned her head around his hip to see, pushing the loose strands of her hair from her porcelain face.
There was an air of ancient decay in the house, an undisturbed rotting mustiness that stung my nostrils. Dust disturbed by our passing drifted into the light of the candle, dipping and swaying in the breeze from the open doorway.
I could just about make out a staircase ahead, the bleached wood of its railings carrying the appearance of bones, pale and brittle. The carpet was well worn in the centre of the stairs but a faded blue floral pattern remained at the edges. The same carpet ran along the hallway, past a small basement door that stood slightly ajar and towards what looked like a kitchen, judging from the large silhouette of a wood burning stove visible through the open doorway. It stood out against the intermittent moonlight that was creeping through a rain spattered window beyond, its black iron belly cold and empty.
"We could use..." Marcus started to say, but I placed a finger to my lips and rolled my eyes. Marcus frowned but kept quiet, rain running down his face and dripping from his jaw onto the carpet with a gentle patter. We needed to be sure we were alone before we made ourselves at home, after all, this was not our house. Our house was no doubt being pulled down by the elements, many miles away, lost forever in the water and mud.
There were two doors either side of the hallway, both closed. The walls seemed a little damp but not mouldy and were covered with a simple white wood-chip wallpaper. There was a small brass light-switch to my left, which I flicked on and off once or twice. It made a gentle clicking sound but there was no light, as I had expected. When I looked up I saw water had pooled within the light-bulb that sat within a small blue shade, swirling as it swayed gently on the cord. Above the doorway on the left there was a small painting of a dock side in a plain mahogany frame, and I stopped a moment to stare in fascination. Even though they were small and indistinct and the brushwork was smudged and imprecise, still... the amount of people there... the conversations they must have, the families, the dreams, the arguments. I could almost hear them speak...
The sound of Cato and Perdita's shuffling footsteps on the carpet awoke me from my reverie, and I looked at them questioningly.
“It's too cold and wet outside, we'll wait here. Just inside, only a bit. Just to keep warm,” he whispered, his lips trembling. I nodded, and as they waited Marcus and I checked the two rooms either side of them.
One of them was a sitting room of sorts, piled high with books in various states of repair. The curtains were drawn, giving the room an oppressive air, like a museum exhibit. There were antique armchairs, side-tables cluttered with photo frames and assorted knick-knacks, and curiosities and memorabilia scattered throughout what was obviously a study. There was also a small brandy glass with the contents long dehydrated into a dirty stain at the bottom, sitting next to an old style dial telephone. I picked up the receiver but the line was dead, which I somehow expected given the ancient feeling of the house. Although it hadn't been disturbed for a long time, the room still felt lived in. I tried to imagine what kind of person had sat in these chairs and leafed through all these books. I scanned the photographs, bringing my candle close to the faded images. They were all of various family and friend groups, some on holiday, some working on a fishing boat, and most containing one particular man. He looked quite tall and well built, his muscle turning to paunch in the later photographs as he entered retirement age, with the latest photographs showing him in his seventies. His smile, though a rare occurrence in the photos, seemed to carry the air of a World War II fighter pilot, with a thin salt and pepper moustache to complete the picture. Indeed, some of the photographs showed him in a uniform, though whether he was army, navy or air force I couldn’t say.
The room was clearly free of any danger to us, so I gently closed the door and moved to the one opposite. There was a light scratching sound as the door closed, probably the wood catching on the carpet.
The other room was a well maintained dining room, with the curtains also drawn. Five seats were spaced around the table at regular intervals, with a plain but elegant tablecloth still laid out. There was a cabinet filled with various assorted china and dishes, one or two pictures adorning the walls, but otherwise the room was nondescript. I could hear the sound of the rain tapping on the windows – a storm was beginning. We moved on.
The kitchen turned out to be quite well stocked despite the apparent rush and mass departure of the harbour's residents. Everything within the fridge had long ago turned to rotten mush and green mould was overflowing from the bread bin, however there was a large supply of tinned food within the cupboards that overhung the counters. There was a gas stove fitted against the wall but when I tried to turn it on I found that the gas supply was cut, either at the house or at source. Either way it was useless. At least we had the wood burning stove, which was obviously an original antique fitting, later relegated to the sole job of providing heat. There was even some wood piled near the back door, and Marcus spotted a fat bodied spider lounging in a web between the logs. He viciously jabbed the gossamer strands with his finger and grinned maliciously as the spider ran towards the vibration, its swollen abdomen jiggling, before being disappointed by the lack of a meal. Cato tutted under his breath at Marcus' childish behaviour, making Marcus look briefly abashed, however he soon returned to his previous giddy demeanour when I pointed out all the food we had found. The curtains were open in this room and we could just about see the outline of a garden in the moonlight, with the wind whipping through the branches of the various trees and bushes that surrounded the small overgrown lawn at its centre.
All four of us moved on and checked the upstairs, Cato not trusting Marcus to control himself in this new and fascinating environment. I tried to assure him that I had it under control but he still followed behind us, eyes scrutinising every detail of the building, assessing its safety. My nervousness dissipated more with each clear room but my longing for some human contact rose to replace it. All of these rooms, filled with these items... somehow I knew what they were and how they were used but I still had no idea of my past. Where had I been born, where had I grown up and how had I arrived on the island, flung onto the beach like a piece of driftwood? If I met someone and they recognised me, then... then what? What would I ask them? What answer would satisfy my curiosity? The truth might be a cold stark light, showing the details of my past but also highlighting any secret horrors it may contain. I pushed the thought to the back of my mind and tried to refocus. The rain had started to come down in sheets, huge droplets rattling the house's windows. We needed to find out if we could rest here first. Answers would come later, I hoped.
We found the source of the leak in one of the smaller bedrooms, as rain was pouring through a gaping hole in the roof that had been caused by a falling tree. The huge trunk was still leaning against the house like a drunk at a bar, its branches reaching through the hole as if it was trying to keep itself upright. The carpet was waterlogged and the room a lost cause, so we shut the door and checked the other rooms.
There was a small and still functioning bathroom fitted with a bath, toilet and basin, and several brightly coloured pills in bottles kept within a glass cabinet. Cato hid these away in his coat to stop Marcus finding them and consuming them like they were sweets. The other two rooms on the floor were both bedrooms. The first was virtually bare, with an empty metal bedstead and a lingering stench of bleach. The second room however was much better for our purposes, containing a spacious double bed, still made and covered with crisply pressed linen. There were other bits of furniture in the room but as soon as I saw the bed my fatigue struck me like a hammer blow to the back of the head and I didn't even bother to look to see what they were. I had intended on organising some sort of sleeping arrangement to make the most of the beds but in the end we realised we were all so tired and familiar with each other that we simply settled under the covers of the double bed, hugging each other for warmth, with Perdita safe in our arms.
The rain continued to fall, a wordless lullaby just for us, as the candle burned down into a puddle.