These fizzling ropes are hot on his skin. His legs are bound achingly together. His arms sear, won’t quite go numb. He is hanging from the ceiling, a table beneath him. On the table are the old idiot’s diagrams and maps, one so large of the graveyard that it spills over the edges. It’s a map that’s grown bigger over several months, pieces of thick A4 stuck along its sides to represent expanding borders, the intricate detail of the original map giving way to haphazard sketchings, and all over the whole thing are scribbles and arrows and box-outs, a forever-shifting code, a rough and fluid strategy.
Crosswell drools watching the saliva string splatter on the west side of Daisy Hill.
‘Glad you’re awake,’ growls the old man, so focused on the dangerous man hanging from his dining room ceiling that he does not hear the faint scree of a hatch eased open.
‘Glad I’m not dead.’ In such pain as he’s suffering, Crosswell struggles to say the words levelly.
‘I’m not you,’ the old man says through a thin smile. ‘I’m nothing like you. Sometimes I wish I was.’
Crosswell watches him rub his left arm. ‘How about you let me down then, Mister. Nothing Like Me?’
‘After everything you’ve done? You’re staying where you are.’
‘I’ve done nothing.’
‘Weeks of nothing! Weeks of leaving me to turn the dead!’
‘Because it’s time. This is what it’s been all about…’
‘No!’
‘Not no! You got it all twisted up in your head! You’ve let yourself think it’s up to you, that you get to decide. We were here to get them aligned, get them ready to come at the same time. They’re aligned! There’s nothing else for us to do! We just kiss goodbye to the world as it is, and let them go!’
The boy in the hall, too exhausted to run, listens as the old man snaps, ‘What if they’re wrong about the time? Why can’t we give the world more time? These people deserve a chance…’
‘A chance to what? Put things right themselves? They don’t want to. That would take effort from everyone. What makes you think that could ever happen? You’re delaying the very event you’re meant to lead. This is the reason you’re here.’
‘Our reason for being here is to do this at the right time, if that time comes! Nnnnnggg…’ He leans on the table, scrunches the map as the pain in his chest intensifies.
‘Goddamn it, man, even that idiot girl of yours is on our side!’
‘No, she isn’t…’
‘She is. She doesn’t want to hear all your science about the Turn because she understands better than you. The world is rotten. It went bad. The girl sees it better than you.’ The slap across his face rocks Crosswell hard, so it feels like his arms will pop from their sockets.
‘You don’t know her.’
‘Neither do you.’
Neither does the boy in the hall.
The old man taps a spot on the map, one of thousands of graves. ‘This one got out, I know that! You do too! This one got out. So they aren’t all aligned, you lazy fat pig! How can they be aligned when they’re already out? If they go at all, they’re meant to go all at once! People are going to see them now. They’ll have time to react!’
‘React how? They won’t know what to do whether it’s one or a thousand. It’s excuses with you, always excuses. Tell the truth, old man! You’re a coward, you’ve bottled it. You thought you were tough enough, but you’re not.’
‘I’ve got a daughter to think of!’ Clutching his arm again.
‘A granddaughter. And she hates you.’ Crosswell feels good about saying that. It’s the knife he’s been grasping for. He can wound deeply with this. ‘She’s never here.’
‘Shut up.’
‘She spends all of her time running away from you.’ Numb fingers are clumsy and make for shoddy work, but he’s been humming low and quiet when the old man speaks, low and quiet and deep in his throat, and the old man must be hurting because he’s missed it, heard not one note, and Crosswell has two darts now, flimsy and uncertain ammunition. ‘She’s told us all.’ A few more sucker punches to wear him down. Quick punches; Crosswell’s shoulders are pouring fire. ‘She’s said it again and again…’ he aims a dart towards his feet which are tied together with a light-whip that frazzles and spits ‘…how she’s tired of the constant unending pressure…’ If he hits his own heel it will burn far worse than his arms are. That’s if the dart holds together long enough. ‘…and how she wants you to get the message already…’ A very short hum, a directional note, a guide, he hopes.
‘Shut up!’
‘…and how she hates her parents for dying and leaving her stuck with you.’
All at once: the old man’s face greys and pains, a storm-ball gathers in his knot-fingered hands, Crosswell wills the dart to fly.
The dart slices through the light-whip with a burst of shards. Gravity does the rest. His legs swing down fast, pulling the rest of him with them. A jerk at his arm sockets, the whole of his body weight dropping. He cries out louder than he ever has. The bonds around his wrists snap. He’s falling. Hits the tabletop in a sitting position. Electric bolts fire across the top of his head, burn a streak through his hair, scorch a trough in his scalp. Two more shots fly too high.
No need for quiet now! Crosswell uses his pain, hollers a note loud and round, throws out his second dart. It shears the air, leaves a wake. The old man is crumbling, the exertion too much. The dart clips his ear, blasts off the lobe with a flesh-scorching flash.
The old man’s finished.
Crosswell chooses to finish him anyway.
The third dart hits the centre of his chest. The old man hits the floor behind the table. Crosswell scrambles away even though he’s certain it’s over. Certain sometimes is not certain enough.
Caleb has heard all of this, and is sure now that Hell never ends.