A Season For Everything, Matthew Fairman [the best books to read TXT] 📗

threw them on the floor and ran back out into the street. It was as if she had seen a ghost. That man, who she had seen lying in the exact same spot as she had found her son, was now, here, in front of her holding a coiled length of blue rope tightly in his hand.’

 

Beaton bought some batteries to replace those which he had removed from the torch. He also found a long reel of waxed gardening twine, some blue synthetic rope and a box of white candles. When Beaton went up to the counter to pay for his items he was aware that some sort of a commotion had taken place. The security alarm had gone off and a teller had run out into the street after someone.

'Probably just kids trying to steal spray paint' he thought to himself. He paid for the few items in his basket and returned to the high street.

He looked at his list. Further along was a camping store. After some time browsing the shelves he bought a sleeping bag, a small camping stove and some replacement gas canisters. He went to leave the store and he stopped. It was snowing heavily outside now.

'I've never seen it snowing so much this time of year.' announced the young girl behind the counter.

They reckon we're certain to have a white christmas.'’

'Yes, I suppose if it settles then we will.' replied Beaton.

'Do you sell rain jackets? This jacket is already damp'. The young girl directed him to a rail at the back of the shop near a wall of hiking shoes. He found the cheapest one he could find and paid for it.

He asked the girl to remove the tags with some scissors and pulling it on over the duffle coat, he walked out into the snow. He looked a little odd with the skirt of the brown duffle coat poking out from the waist band of the raincoat but he didn't seem to care. Beaton bought a sandwich from the bakers and walked back to the bus station eating it as he went. Instead of returning home he caught a bus that was going in the opposite direction.

The bus dropped him off a mile or so beyond the village. He crossed the road and climbed a stile that led into a steeply sloping pasture. Some cows were grazing in the corner of the field on a patch of stubbly grass that was exposed beneath the shade of some trees. The path through the field was well used by walkers but was now hidden beneath fresh virgin snow. He passed close to an old pill box that was half hidden in a patch of scraggy bushes. The concrete had blown in places to reveal the rusting steel struts inside its skin. The walls were heavily graffitied, it smelt strongly of piss. As a child he had played inside of the structure. The path wound through and open gate and into another field. The ground was boggy where the cow herd had churned the the mud around a water trough. The standing water in the puddles was frozen solid. The trough contained a milky green block of ice. At the top of the field he followed the line of the hedgerow until he found another stile that led out onto the steep road that ran from the village up to the quarry. The woods were directly opposite him but he continued to climb until he reached the old allotments and the sheds where he had last exited the quarry. The white flakes drifted down steadily and the unpressed snow on the ground was a few inches deep. Patches of brown frozen mud and leaves, churned and rutted, could be seen in those places protected by the canopy of the larger deciduous trees. The rocky ledges of the quarry walls and the tree branches all carried layers of fine snow. The trees in the distance in their muted shades of brown where flecked with fine white strokes as if from the brush of a frantic painter. The scene was transformed, the bright white snow blanketing the floor made it feel less oppressive and the silent, gentle falling flakes carried an airy feeling of peace and tranquility that was normally missing.

'Its like a completely different place now.’ Footprints marked out the trails through the pits. The hollow approach to the mouth of the cave was silent. The pitch black of the cavity, a stark contrast, against the glare of the snow. He ducked into the mine entrance and slid down the slope.

There was reputed to be a place in the mines known as the Abbey. Beaton had never been there himself but as a young boy growing up it had become a legend amongst himself and his friends. They talked of finding it but were always too afraid to venture very far into the dark. The abbey was rumoured to be at the very heart of the hillside. It was a large cavernous space that had been blasted out of the rock with dynamite. Its walls were sheer and the vaulted ceiling was punctured with a hole where a capstone ought to be. In Beaton's mind the darkness of this megalithic tomb was lanced with a finger of pure white light that flooded in from the world above. Beneath this beam of light was a deep well, chiseled from the rock, it was fed by the spring water that filtered through the valley. The well had once supplied fresh spring water to the miners in the caves and the workers above ground. A bucket was hauled up through the cavern and out through the hole at the top. They had never discovered this breach in the valley side that led to the abbey but it was said to be capped with an iron grill. Tales of the dark magical waters in the deep pool, of wishes made when the moon shone in. Of hermits and creatures that lived and protected the abbey from intruders. Conspiracies of tunnels that led to secret military bunkers built during the cold war. They talked about all of these things with fervour and vivid imagination. Beaton had even remembered talk of a tool that was kept in the village. This tool was used to open a grate inside the mines that would lead to the Abbey. Without the tool it was impossible to reach. As the friends grew older and drifted apart, they lost interest in the mines and its mysteries were past on to a knew generation of children to wonder over. He had found the location when he was in his mid twenties, he was struck how un interesting it was. He figured that was just what growing up was all about. Things just became less exciting.

All of this Beaton had forgotten but as soon as he had stepped into the woods he remembered everything. His plan was simple. There were two main tunnels leading from the entrance chamber where he now stood. He shone the torch around the chamber and looked at the arrows and symbols sprayed onto the rock.

'These routes mean nothing to me and anyway, how can I be sure that they are accurate. They could be misleading. I will have to make up my own routes' His plan was to map out each of the tunnels, making sure to always follow the line of the wall to his left. It was something he had remembered being told about mazes and it seemed logical, to himself at least, that this technique would work in an underground labyrinth. For Beaton, this methodical way of thinking made the task at hand seem somewhat less daunting. He stashed some of the spare gas canisters from his bag behind a rock along with his new raincoat. He took the garden cord and tied the free end to a large tree root that had been dragged into the cave and half burnt.

'This will be my lifeline to the outside world'. With the torch in his left hand and the twine over his right shoulder he unreeled the slack from the great spool he was holding and stepped forward into the deepening warren of darkness.

Emma now knew where to find him next should she want to. Now that she was sure in her mind that it was not by coincidence that she had found the man in the quarry. She had seen him lying in the same position on the very same spot she had discovered her dead child. Then the very next day, she had seen this stranger again. She had followed him into a shop only to see him holding in his hands a blue rope. That blue rope, the same rope that had broken, that had snapped and sent Jonathan falling to his death. No that could not simply have been a coincidence. These things spoke directly to Emma. They formed logical patterns in her grief stricken mind.

'There is meaning behind these symbols.’ she told herself. 'I cannot ignore them, to ignore them is to ignore my Jonathan.’

This was the way she rationalised a world without her son. She had done so for years. It was the reason she still lived and walked in the shadow of the quarry. Her cheeks hollowed thin from over a decade of worrying, reliving that day, every day. Over and over, and her living here, with her husband still healthy, alive whilst Jonathan lay buried in the ground. Her living was an abomination against her sons memory. No parent should ever experience the death of a child, it is opposed to all natural laws.

She grabbed her umbrella and scarf from behind the door and told her husband that she was going out to post some christmas cards. It was an excuse that was designed for herself. It was barely even acknowledged by her Husband. Mike was busy helping the delivery man move the steel beer barrels from off of the lorry and down into the basement. She left Kaiser at home in the warm. She could have done with the company but he was an old man now and his back legs had started to cause him pain. It would have been selfish to drag him out into the snow and the cold. Besides, Kaiser didn’t seem to like the Quarry either. Jonathan had help raise Kaiser from when he was just a puppy and they had gone everywhere with each other. He had been with Jonathan on the day of the accident and was probably the only witness to what actually took place that day. He was certainly the last living creature to see Jonathan alive. It was therefore not so strange then that the dog did not always seem to enjoy his walks through those woods up on the hill.

There was an open bed lorry parked a little way up the road. Two men where shovelling brown grit from the back of it and raking it across the ground. She walked past the post office and the primary school.

‘I used to meet Jonathan at those gates’, She thought to herself, ‘He hated it when I did. He wanted to walk home alone but I wouldn’t let him. Funny how you imagine all these terrible things that could happen and yet when things really do go bad it’s always something else. It’s as if fate or God or something is outguessing you at every turn.’

She went on this way in her head as she walked up the hill. Oft times she was distracted by these long moments of thought. A place, a word, or a feeling could carry her away from the present and into meandering avenues of thought. She passed the allotments which she had once tended when they first moved to the village. Memories of small grubby hands pulling out clumps of radishes from the loose black soil.

‘He said it was like finding treasure, couldn’t pronounce his r’s, little dear. Wadishes, he