The day of the wasp, as he catalogued it, played on a YouTube loop in his memory. It was a Sunday and for once the skies over Manchester were bright blue with a few wisps of white cloud immobile, as if they had been stuck on. He was to be found as always on such a day in the back garden, his personal zoo, big enough to smother him in its wonders, even at the ripe old age of nine. The scent of flowers wrapped around him like a flag in a light wind. The roses were particularly pungent but they weren’t alone. Pansies in bright contrasting colours matched the butterflies that seemed to crouch and quiver on their leaves. He always thought they looked scared as if waiting for some horrible force to come bursting in, shouting at them.
He knew how that felt.
His favourite were the spiders. Lying on his tummy as close as he could get to them he would watch them spin their webs, or climb over to the tiny flying bugs trapped within. Spiders were clever, he decided, perfect hunters. They would stake out the territory of high insect traffic and then find two branches or posts to hold their web. Only rarely were they foolish enough to waste energy on a web that would be torn apart by humans, setting them up above head height. The trick he saw was in their preparation, for once the web was set the spider could essentially sit back and relax. It seemed the spiders were in no hurry to eat their victims and he wondered if the spiders actually enjoyed watching the plight of those trapped and struggling beetles and gnats.
This day, however, was different. He was lying on the lawn drowsy, smelling his skin as the sun warmed it when something dropped right close to his arm. It was a fat black spider, inert. As he propped himself up a wasp landed beside it and wasted no time latching on to it. The hunter had been felled, presumably stung by the wasp, which even now was dragging the spider’s large carcass along the trimmed edge of lawn. He watched fascinated as the wasp reached the base of the small garden shed and began to hoist itself up carrying the spider. What incredible strength and resolve it displayed. At one point it hit some impediment which on close inspection turned out to be a spider web. In trying to shake itself free the wasp fell all the way back to the ground with its booty. It instantly resumed its climb with the stunned spider towards its own nest under the eaves of the shed. It was around this point that he became aware of an unusual sound hovering beneath the twittering of the birds, a kind of hum. His first thought was it might be the lawnmower but he almost immediately dismissed that for it was too even, not cackling and popping. He edged towards the house and the sound got stronger. Now he identified it as a motor, more muffled though than he would have expected. A narrow concrete path led up the side of the house, a sizeable two-storey. He had expected to see a car idling out front in the quiet street but there was no car. His mind grappled with the quandary: no car, yet the sound was still near.
He swung and found himself facing the garage door.
The day of the wasp dashed. Once more he was in the present, the cement sky pressing down upon him. The sand was still warm on his back. He sensed something, a warning in the air. Was it just a human’s in-built radar alert to an approaching cyclone, a sophisticated development of the ‘flight’ instinct? Did we react to air pressure in the way we might if some giant animal with sharp teeth ran towards us? Or was this just for him, the Power who had guided and protected his every move whispering to him that it was time to go?
There.
He sensed its breath. He had stayed too long already. All things must come to an end. It had been a long, long journey but from the first moment he had held the letter in his hands he knew his life was forever changed. The hand that had penned the words had been unsteady, untidy, making it difficult to read but no less potent.
… I knew your father, he was my friend, the best friend I ever had but it did not begin like that really. We were different, from opposite walks of life. I was the worst kind of man, hardly a man at all, perhaps more like an animal. I would like to think I changed, and if it is true that I have, then all credit goes to your father. I feel I owe it to you to tell you all I know. Back then I was a pitiful excuse for a human being, a junkie who sold…
He saw Wallen’s face before him now.
‘I could not have done it without you, old friend,’ he said, then looked back across to the pit and felt a swelling sense of pride. Almost done.