The Legacy - the Final Chapter
"Make a mark on the world that cannot be erased" Maya Angelou
Previously in Part X
“There’ll be no presents this year, Steven. Harry can’t have Christmas, and neither shall you.”
They stare at each other.
“But I wanted to ask for Harry to get better. Won’t Santa do that? ”
“Santa doesn’t listen to very bad boys, Steven.”
In his bedroom later, as the door is shut on him, Steven gets out of bed to find paper and some coloured pencils. If Daddy won’t post his letter, then he will have to do it himself.
The cell in the dungeon opens…
Part XI
It is the morning of Christmas Eve in the Speighthart house and Steven has awoken first. The excitement of Christmas Day’s approach has not been completely eclipsed and it is his turn to open the advent calendar. Going last always means he gets the even numbered doors and thus the most portentous one is his. He still feels a thrill of excitement as he picks at the perforated doorway, regardless of Harry’s spoilers.
“It’s always a star, number 24, stupid, because it’s Christmas Eve,” Harry would say.
What will it be today?
Perhaps this time it could be something different; perhaps the tidings will not be of miraculous birth but of some other future? The cardboard door holds fast; Steven is a nail biter, in recent times more than ever, and they are down to the quick. He cannot get purchase. Glad tidings remain unannounced, the star unseen.
A hammering of footsteps on the stairs breaks his concentration; Mother and Father run about furiously, grabbing coats and car keys; shouting. There has been a call from the hospital, a call that cannot be ignored. Steven stands by the fireplace in the lounge in his dressing gown. One hand in a pocket holds the letter he has written to Father Christmas, the one he intended to sneak out to post before anyone was awake.
“Get your trainers on and get in the car. You’ve no time to get dressed!” Father shouts at him from across the hall.
In the hospital, one little boy stands in shadow in the corner of the dim-lit room while the other lies bathed in the lights of hopeless machines. They beep and, through a mask, hiss a kiss of air into him, lifting his chest beneath the sheets but never to lift his eyelids. Mother and Father sit on either side of the bed each holding an unresponsive hand. Wires and tubes like puppet strings are attached, but they will never raise him up in lively dance.
Father turns to the boy in the corner. “You did this,” say his eyes. Even though Steven knows that he did not do this, the blame in the stare and the silent fury behind it undoes all the wished-for hopes of his unsent letter. He crumples it within the pocket of his dressing gown at the same moment that cruel fate stops Harry’s heart. Feeling that it is by his own hand that the cardiogram now whines in ceaseless monotone, he withdraws it from his pocket and stares at his clenched fist. The room erupts around the bed in desperate urgency, but nothing can be done.
They did not know what to do once they had said goodbye; they did not want to leave him, but the nurses persuaded them that it would be for the best. In a daze they did as they were told. It is late when they arrive at the rectory. In the back seat of the car Steven senses the seething tautness in his Father’s back and his Mother’s grief in the sobs which rock her seat. Steven did not wait to be told to run to his bedroom while Father carried Mother in, her legs too weak with sorrow.
In his bedroom Steven hears the muffled intonations of what his future is going to hold. He unfolds the crumpled letter to Father Christmas, imagining what might have been had it been sent, then dropping it to flutter briefly and disappear under his bed. He gets out his drawing book and begins another letter.
It is nearly Christmas Day but Steven still has time. Mother is in the bedroom and Father is in the study. He will be drinking the horrible golden liquid that Harry made him drink once. Father drinks it when he is angry. There is a tell-tale light from beneath the door and a chink of glass as Steven slides past in his socks. In his hands there is another letter; he must post it before midnight without fail and he knows where he must go.
Once outside, he hurries to the churchyard but not to the wall that he usually climbs; instead he wanders from the driveway and round to the bolted wychegate. There beside the gate, ensconced within the stonework, he has spied beneath the ivy the faded crimson post box, instantly recognisable as such despite the spalling of its red-painted ironwork. Tonight, the whole of the box is visible, the ivy curtain torn away by his Father’s clumsy clambering.
Its mouth beckons.
He reaches for his letter and approaches. As his hand raises to the box, the edges of the black slot seem to move, to fluctuate and distort; the russet rim of the hole whispers like lips; a myriad of hisses in his ears, a hum of nascent words. He has not crossed the threshold, but something senses his approach as the seconds count down to midnight.
On the envelope is written:
“To
The Underground Man”
He pushes it into the letter box and though the slot is narrow, somehow, impossibly, it widens to welcome Steven’s hand. He feels compelled to push it in until the whole of it is consumed. He meets no resistance and pushes further still into the meatus, which is far deeper than earthly dimensions should allow, until his arm is buried within the void up to the elbow. Then he is stopped. He feels the fingers, the familiar cold caress upon his hand. He feels the letter withdrawn from his grip, his wish delivered into the shadowy portal. The whispers stop. There is silence. Steven’s breath forms mist and for a moment, through it, within the depths of the post box, there is some glimmer of illumination but then that too is gone.
Somewhere a distant church bell chimes the first of the dozen peals of midnight and as it does, the whispers return with deafening volume and coalesce into the voice of the Reverend:-
NO! NOOOoooo! Most evil and lost boy! Oh detestable and corrupted Nephew! Have you not listened to all that I have taught you? Did I not warn you of the Lord’s commandments and that the final justice is His and His alone to dispense? Thou hast forsaken our filial bond, oh scion of the Speighthart line!
To bring just and prolonged suffering and indignity upon the unworthy; that has been my purpose o’er generations and for which I bequeathed to you my powers and my teachings, that the righteous curse might endure! But not this…not this…
Steven pulls out his hand from the box and the screams of the Reverend vanish back into the aether. Steven smiles. In the dungeon, a door closes, the finality of its clanging reverberates the echo dissipating. He returns to the house and slips into bed to await what Christmas Day will bring. Within the ground, a spirit writhes and seethes, but can only muster one final futile gesture; from the mouth of the post-box, Steven’s letter is ejected. Faded and yellowed by the ages visited upon it in an instant by the touch of the Reverend’s ghoulish hand, it flutters to the ground and disintegrates to ashen fragments.
It is Christmas morning and Steven wakes. At the end of his bed there lies a stocking…Father Christmas has been! The day feels ripe with promise.
Mother had awakened from drugged sleep and in a dream of denial brushed off Father’s hands and ran through the house, her silken dressing gown like a shroud billowing behind her.
“I must put out the boys’ presents! How could I forget! Father Christmas must come for them before they wake…oh how could I forget my darling boys.”
Steven clambers to the end of his bed to drag the pleasantly heavy stocking from the floor and tip it up, hoping that a chocolate orange will nestle at the very bottom. And there it is a proper Christmas! He begins to peel open the orange foil, when from somewhere comes a sharp and echoing sound.
Thack…thack…thack..
On and on it goes. Simon gets up and looks from his window – nothing.
Thack…thack…thack…
He leaves his room and passes Harry’s door; it is ajar and at the end of Harry’s pristine but obsolescent bed, there hangs another stocking.
Thack…Thack…Thack...
He descends the stairs and peers into the lounge. The Christmas tree leans, mortally wounded. Beneath it there is strewn a carnage of half wrapped gifts, ribbon and bows, crushed boxes and trampled baubles.
Thack…thack…thack…
The sound grows louder; Steven wanders to the kitchen, his parents are not there. He hears his mother’s voice now from the front of the house and he wanders to the hall, where the front door is not quite closed. A chill breeze blows down the hallway and he looks to his bare toes, pulling his dressing gown tighter around him.
Thack…thack…thack…
Louder still the curious noise, and now between each sound comes the grunting of his father. He slowly opens the door and peeps outside.
At first he cannot see anything but his Mother; then, guided by the rhythmic sounds and grunting from his father, his gaze is drawn to the church yard wall, to the line of trees and finally to Mephistopheles the ancient yew tree, from beneath which his father emerges. He is wielding an axe. He rests upon it for a moment, then begins his work again.
Thack…thack…thack..
“Shall we go inside Mummy; it’s very cold.”
She looks down at him, eyes red and hollow, “Yes of course darling. Let’s make some breakfast and wait for Daddy to finish with…with the nasty nasty tree.” She tousles his head, a beatific smile upon her face.
A little while later, from within the kitchen, the revving of an engine brings breakfast preparations to a stop. The engine sounds grow louder, higher pitched. Mother rushes to the door to see, but Steven has cocoa to finish. Father will be finished eventually.
The revving of the engine grows louder and his mother begins to scream
“Stop! Stop Marcus, for goodness sake!”
Steven, cocoa in hand, now leaves the kitchen and walks up the hall. The revving and screaming growing louder all the time; the smell of burning and exhaust fumes fills the hallway carried on a draft through the gap in the half closed door.
He opens it wide enough to take a step outside into the sunlight of a crisp Christmas morning. Father is in the Land Rover now. His face is contorted, eyes alight with fury and hands on the wheel. Mother is standing in front of the car, hands out, banging on the bonnet, waving, screaming, entreating him to stop. Smoke billows from the rear wheels and the car oscillates from left to right slightly, straining like a beast. A thick tow rope stretches from the back of the vehicle and up to the yew tree. It thrums with energy.
Then…Father Christmas arrives.
There is a cracking rending explosion of sound, and the old tree tears from the ground. In an instant, the car leaps forward, its hundreds of horsepower released. There is buzzing whiplash sound, loud above even the engine noise as the car smashes into mother and over her, silencing her screams instantly. Father is too shocked to brake and the car bumps and bounces forward and crashes to a stop against the pillars on either side of the door, buckling them inwards. Steven does not move. There is a moment when Father’s horrified eyes meet Steven’s for the briefest instant and then with a hideous bang, the windscreen crazes into a thousand blood-soaked crystals and the heavy metal hook that had been attached to the tow rope erupts from the glass.
Steven sips at his cocoa. Blood trickles down the glass and the bonnet and drips from the end of the hook. He stays there, entranced by the symmetrical beauty of the cracks in the windscreen and a single red rose of blood blossoming upon the floor. Then something else catches his eye; Something caught in the roots of the Yew tree that has been torn from the earth. Something white against the black earth.
He approaches the wall of the Church, stepping round the body of his mother, his gaze never leaving what he sees entwined within the roots of the tree which has toppled over the wall and crashed into the garden. He takes a final sip of the delicious chocolatey dregs of cocoa and puts down his mug. The tree trunk will be easier to climb than the wall ever was, and up he goes.
When he steps from the trunk into the once hallowed ground, he sense everything is different. There is silence. There are no dread stirrings from below, no whispers and words from beyond and beneath. He looks to the grave of the Reverend; the stone has been toppled backwards and is cracked in two.
He looks up to the gnarled tangle of the roots and into the black sockets of the Reverend’s skull. Roots thread the rib cage and pelvis and are entwined with the bones of his arms and legs. Dust and soil trickle down from the skeleton and then with a creak the skull drops forward and falls at his feet. Steven picks it and hugs it tightly to him.
“Thank you for all you have taught me, dear Uncle,” he whispers to it then, careful not to drop his prize, he threads his way back down the tree, stoops to pick up his mug and returns to the house, closing the door behind him.
Within the dungeon a little boy cries himself to sleep in the deepest darkest corner behind the heavy door of a cell that never more will open.
The End
To start this from the beginning, click here but it’s rather too late if you have already read the end first, isn’t it…
I do hope that you have enjoyed reading this as much as I have enjoyed writing it.
Thank you jeannine. i did have a redemptive and slightly more happy ending in the balance... but the darkness is what i always crave. every time i check it i find more punctuation wrong too!
its not TOO horrible is it? i was worrying that it had gone from somewhat tongue in cheek gothic pastiche to very bleak psychological horror...
I'm with Jeannine on this one - in terms of the story that was an immensely satisfying ending, even if it was terribly sad.
And really quite amazing how the language of the end is totally unlike that of the beginning. It's seems a very long time ago now, that beginning.
All in all, this has been a very fine piece of work indeed.