Requiem (6 page)

'He has told us
time and time again to heed His wrath. But who here has obeyed His
commands? None! I tell thee again – none! Hell-bound are thee when
the rapture cometh! And it cometh soon!'

The manic
preacher stood before a slab of rock used as a makeshift altar.
Hardened tears of wax had crept down its face from the few stunted
candles that squatted and burned lazily from its uneven surface.
She couldn't decipher the darkened expression on his face but his
words conveyed his urgency easily enough.

'The word of
God is law. Not this... this Warlord doctrine! Do not bear witness
to the falsehoods, oh children of the one true Lord!'

There was one
man in the congregation. He lay slouched over the side of one of
the pews, a puddle of vomit spread on the floor beneath his limp
silhouette.

Seline turned
to leave. With the images of all that the Insolvency had offered
her over the past day pushing their way through her mind she looked
one last time at the spireless church and thought to herself that
If God still had any interests in the affairs of these souls it
could only be as a reminder to himself of his own failings. The
delirious, unheeded ranting faded into an echo as Seline worked her
way down the street.

There were no
sign posts. In fact there was no recognisable or consolidated
attempt at an address system. Numbers and letters appeared randomly
painted over doors, some marked with only an X, others with
unintelligible symbols and scribbles. The only thing the markings
held in common was their colour – the same shade of red as the
welcome message she had read floating atop the city upon that
massive billboard. She kept following the street as Sear had told
her. There were no memories coming to the surface, only a vague,
perpetual sense of deja-vu. She walked slowly, wading through it
all, waist deep in the seething sickness that licked at her
skin.

Seline stopped
about halfway down own one of the blocks. Painted above the door of
one of the houses was the word 'seventeen'. It wasn't scrawled like
the other addresses. It was a flowing display bordering on
calligraphy. It wasn't as crude or faded as the others. It was at
such extreme odds with the city it inhabited, like a rose in trash
can. It finally came to Seline, that this was the place she was
looking for.

Piles of
shingles had collected beneath the low edges of the roof. In their
place were sheets of corroded metal nailed as economically as
possible over the bald patches of the dwelling's rapidly receding
hairline.

Seline stood
for a long time looking at the thin lines of delicate red painted
above the decaying arches of the entrance, now pretending to find
it more interesting than it was in a petty attempt to avoid
whatever might be lurking inside. If you can ever truly encounter a
point of no return then how are you supposed to be able to tell? If
this moment were to become her own private Rubicon then what was
there to recommend it? A patch of dried dirt, a sweating brow, a
loaded die to cast and a shaking hand with which to cast it.

It was an old
wooden door; thick and heavy. Made to stand up against the wind.
Sand was lodged into its dry splitting boards. Green flakes of
paint curled and lifted from its surface. Seline knocked three
times with the back of her knuckles. Movement came from inside the
house. A faint scuffing and scraping sound approached from the
opposite side of the door. A gentle, elderly voice spoke up.

‘Yes, who’s
there?’

‘Seline.’

No reply.

‘I’m looking
for Abigail. Do you know where I can find her?’ asked Seline.

A metal bolt
unhinged. Then another. A rattling
thud
came from the base
of the door. Seline took a step back. The door jerked back an
inch.

‘You’ll have to
help me, dear.’

‘Abigail?’

‘Just place
your hands on the door and give it a little push. No need to be
shy. Yes, that’s the way!’

Seline
struggled and heaved against the weight as the monolith scraped
over greyed floorboards until a big enough gap had formed. She
looked sceptically through the opening into the dimly lit
interior.

‘Can you fit,
dear?’

‘Are you Ab
-’

‘Oh, how rude
of me! You might have become a little bit porky since the last time
I saw you, eh? I was wondering what all that heaving and grunting
was about.’ A small elderly face thrust itself through the opening.
‘My, my you’re still a wee little thing!’

The old lady
grabbed Seline’s wrist and dragged her inside. The first thing
Seline noticed was the barrel of an old shotgun rigged up from the
ceiling and pointed towards the door. She immediately froze. Her
eyes trained on the piece of string tied to the trigger.

The old lady
waved her hand dismissively. ‘Oh don’t worry about that, honey.
Jessie’s for the unwelcome guests but you are most certainly
welcome! Now, I’m sorry to be such a slave driver but could you
help me shut the door?’

Seline’s mouth
was dry. She swallowed and looked down at the woman. The sunlight
peering through the open door revealed shallow corrugations and
creases in her skin. Her hair was greyed, remarkably clean, and
flowing just below her shoulders.

Seline's voice
cracked. ‘Do I know you?’

She looked at
Seline, smiled. Warm. Mischievous.

‘Here, help me
shut this door,' she said, 'and I’ll get you something to
drink’.

Motes of dust
passed through the beams of light peering through the tears and
holes in the curtains. The air was musty and stale. Seline could
feel it scratching her skin as the old lady led her down the
hallway with a single wax candle.

She found her
eyes trailing along the surface of the floorboards following their
dark splitting grains, contorting and twisting around deep seated
knots. Seline was guided along the thin trail of exposed wooden
boards into what she assumed was the lounge. Almost every inch of
vacant floor space was occupied by towers of books stacked one on
top of the other. In the centre of the room, entombed within the
shrine of paperbacks, were two worn and faded recliner chairs.
Their red lacquered contours had been scoured out and rubbed away
in a cartoonish, grey outline of the human body. Two ornate wooden
stands had been set up next to the chairs. Abigail lit two more
candles and placed one onto each of them.

She turned to
Seline. 'Water or tea?'

'Uh, water
thank you.'

'I don't have
any water.'

'Wh-'

'Tea it is!
Take a seat, honey. I'll be back in a moment,' she said before
shuffling out of the room.

Dust and old
flakes of skin saturated the air. The dampness weighed down on
Seline, pushing her further into the cushions of the chair as she
sat down. She shifted her body uncomfortably and looked around the
room. At first she was looking for more stringed up guns or
possible escape routes but the stakes of books quickly caught her
eye. She tried to make out the titles of some of the books
spiralling from the stacks on the floor. The only name she
recognised was written along the binding of a thick dense volume
half way up one of the stacks. '
The complete works of
Shakespeare'
read the cracked green spine in what must have
once been a gold gilded and carefully scribed font but was now
faded and weathered from dust and excessive use. There seemed to be
no particular order to the haphazardly formed library before her.
Just a mixture of letters and words amassed on yellowed pages.

Loud clinking
of old ceramic plates and cups came from the next room as if
Abigail were opening and closing every drawer and door she could
find. As uncertain as Seline was, there was something welcoming in
the old lady's manner and the humid touch of the cramped, sunless
rooms. Seline slid off the edge of her seat and crouched next to
one of the larger stacks of books. She ran her fingers along their
spines admiring the different textures.

She stood up
and gently slid some books from the top of another of the piles,
feeling the weight of the pages and bindings in her hand. Words and
stories existed in this place. Not letters on a screen or ideas in
her head. They were tangible. They were heavy. She wiped her hand
over the cover to clear the thick layer of dust that had settled
there. She read the title of the book in her head.
The complete
Sherlock Holmes
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes was
an old detective. Seline knew this because Belameir knew this.

She gently
leafed through the brittle and fibrous pages. She stepped back to
get a better angle of light on the page.

A deep creaking
sound arched across the room from beneath her foot. A tower of thin
spined books tilted towards her. She dropped Sherlock to the floor
and forced the side of her body against the leaning tower. It took
all her weight just to stop the stack from completely collapsing.
She looked back at the floor where Sherlock had fallen. He had
knocked the base of another stack. It was toppling towards her.
Seline threw her hand back to prop it up while her right foot shot
out to support yet another stack in front of her. A small plume of
dust had formed around her. She tilted her head back to escape the
swarm of floating debris. Abigail was now shuffling in from the
kitchen. The embarrassment of Seline's predicament kept her from
calling for help. She had been left seated quietly in a chair and
was now rampaging like an apologetic Godzilla through the
leather-bound structures of the living room. The particles of dust
tickled the inside of her nose. She reared her head back further to
avoid sneezing.

Abigail entered
the room as a sneeze tore its way out of Seline. Her right hand
slipped and she fell to the floor with mountains of books crashing
down around her. It was over in only a few seconds and Seline was
left sitting in the middle of a cloud of dust with bent pages and
frayed edges forming the surrounding rubble. The stack of thin
spined books that precipitated the scene had been smeared out over
the floorboards. Thinner black disks had slid from between their
pages.

'I see you've
found my record collection,' said Abigail. Her voice held no anger
or condescension. 'Luckily I keep the hardbacks in the other room!'
She placed the tea on the stand and came to assist Seline who was
hoping that the dimness of the candles would hide the redness in
her face.

'Are you
alright?' Abigail asked.

'I. Am.
So
. Sorry. I'll, I'll clean this up.'

'Oh, don't
worry about it. It's probably more organised now than it was before
anyway.'

Abigail waved
her hand in the air while looking over the wreckage then turned
around as if nothing had happened.

'You don't mind
green tea do you?' she asked as she went back to the table.

Not being
appeased by Abigail's complete dismissal of the mess she had made,
Seline began re-stacking the books.

'Green tea's
fine, thank you,' said Seline. She hated green tea.

Seline picked
up one of the black disks from the floor and slid it back into its
envelope. She tried to start a conversation to distract herself
from her own embarrassment.

'I thought
these were books at first,' she said.

'Those are
called records, dear. They're a bit before your time. Quite a bit
before my own time to be honest.'

A lot of the
covers portrayed grainy, out-of-focus photos of instruments and
musicians in obscure, uncomfortable looking poses.

'This is how
people used to listen to music?' she asked as she repackaged and
organised the records.

'It was.' She
sighed and thought for a moment. 'But sometimes it doesn't pay to
have such antiquated habits.'

Seline looked
at the floor again unsure of what to say next. She stood up and
moved over to the empty chair. A record sleeve lying at the feet of
the chair caught her eye. A thick white border surrounding a lonely
photo of two men shaking hands one of whom appeared to be on fire.
She stared at the picture, trying to imagine what music would
inspire such an image, but Abigail broke the thought with a loud
sip from her tea cup. Seline instinctively sat down and reached for
the cup which had been placed on the small side table for her. The
tea cup resembled a thimble, even within the fingers of hands as
small as hers. She took a short, quiet sip, smiled nervously,
holding the cup in her palms, resting on her lap.

The old clock
sitting on the mantle ticked and tocked, bracketing and
accentuating the silence between each methodical beat. In this
small, anomalous room the clock hands moved but time had been
stubbornly walking in the opposite direction or rather had been
dragged that way.

'Do you
remember me at all, Seline?' asked Abigail. ‘You used to be a
student of mine.'

Seline was
trying to think of an answer.

'Oh you were a
shy one!' continued Abigail. 'I remember trying to get you to share
what you did on your weekend with the class once and you tried to
offer me money so you wouldn’t have to!' She let out a loud,
mischievous cackle. 'Goodness knows where a five year old learns
the concept of bribery; certainly not from me!’

Seline’s eyes
shifted down to the photo of the burning man. She smiled. Abigail
continued. Her tone darkened somewhat.

'Seline, may I
ask you a personal question?'

Seline looked
up, nodded.

'Then I'll be
blunt, dear. That arm of yours is a souvenir from Ira Station isn't
it?'

Seline nodded
again. The thought of the photo was pushed to the side as the
memories of the station came to mind once again. Memories that had
become more and more frequent over the past few days.