John Matthews - Ascension Day

Inches from his fingertips, Jac watched the recorder shatter, pieces flying as it spun off the table.

Jac’s heart dived, eyes squeezing tight, Last chance gone to save Larry … Nel-M’s figure bleary through salt tears as he opened them again, tilting gently… or maybe Jac was swaying, his legs suddenly uncertain as he took a step towards Nel-M.

Nel-M prodded the air with his gun, took half a step back to maintain the distance between them. ‘Now let’s not try and be brave.’

Then silence. Their triangle tenser now, eyes darting, measuring options. What few were left. Jac’s pulse-beat was suddenly heavier at his temples, the thrum of the cicadas louder.

Jac noticed Truelle’s eyes shift for a half-second towards the main villa, perhaps hoping that Calbrey might have heard the shot and come out. But it had been little more than a dull thud, and as Jac checked fleetingly too, Calbrey was still inside, French windows closed.

Nel-M followed their gaze for an instant; it was obviously something he’d thought of too. He wasn’t going to hang around out here long.

Something , Jac thought desperately, surely something he could do. If he could get Truelle out of this, then he could get him to speak to Candaret directly and ..

Then, as if answering his last two thoughts, Nel-M suddenly shot Truelle in the stomach, bringing him to his knees.

‘No, no… no !’ Jac’s screams rose from deep within, impromptu, the buzzing in his head now so loud that he could barely hear them.

Nel-M’s gun moved briefly towards him, as if he was unsure for a second who to kill first. He who makes the most noise gets it .

But then as the gun shifted quickly back to Truelle, levelling at his head, in that final second all Jac could think of was that last head shot in the police report… Jessica Roche’s sprawled body in the photos, meeting Larry for the first time… sharing a brandy with him that night… and Larry now, looking at the death-chamber clock, waiting for him to call …

With a grunting wheeze, as if the last air was being pushed out of him, Jac suddenly propelled himself towards Nel-M.

Nel-M, distracted fleetingly by the sudden movement and noise, squeezed off the shot anyway. But in the beat’s pause, Truelle started to move — the shot hitting him in the shoulder.

Then Nel-M’s gun was swinging swiftly towards Jac.

Jac hit Nel-M full in the chest before the gun had completed its arc, the breath shunting out of him heavily as they stumbled back.

Nel-M’s gun was swinging back towards him again, Jac gripping his arm before the barrel could point at him, wrestling, still falling back — and then suddenly the ground seemed to fall away beneath Jac’s legs, them both spinning, tumbling through a small bush, and then into the air… falling …

In that final, blind-fury second, Jac hadn’t paid any attention to how close to the promontory edge they were, or how far his momentum with all the Ayliss padding would carry them…

They hit the water quickly, no more than two seconds, the breath bursting out of Jac as something hit hard against his right shoulder, rock or coral a few feet beneath — then they were spluttering back up through the water, still grappling, Jac struggling to focus again on Nel-M.

Faint moonlight finally picked Nel-M out, dapples swilling back and forth, Nel-M’s features twisted, distorted through the few inches of water between them as he tried to push Jac deeper under.

Gun ! Jac choking, spluttering, trying desperately to see whether Nel-M still had it in his hand.

Writhing hard, pushing back — Jac managed to gasp two seconds of air before Nel-M thrust him back under, grappling at his neck and face.

Then suddenly Nel-M froze, gasping faintly, his face wide-eyed as it swam in and out of focus in the water between them; Jac realizing in that instant that Ayliss’s facial prosthetics had come away in Nel-M’s hands, and Jac McElroy was suddenly staring up at him from beneath.

But Jac was still desperately trying to focus on Nel-M’s gun hand, see if he still had it; and as he saw the wavering shadow of Nel-M’s right arm move towards him and heard the shot, then another quickly after — saw and felt the warmth of his own blood swilling all around him in the water — he knew that Nel-M had.

And in those final seconds, as Jac saw Nel-M’s face slowly fade as the water between them became deeper, darker, suddenly he was back in the lake again, sinking down through its dark depths; though this time he knew there was nothing to save him.

‘It’s time now, Larry.’

‘I know.’ Larry nodded dolefully.

The cell bolt slid back, the door opened, and Larry got up and joined Torvald and the six guards outside.

They walked three each side of him, Torvald slightly ahead, as they went along, their footsteps echoing starkly, emptily.

Gone from their eyes .

In the end, to be able to cope in the final moments, Larry had taken a leaf out of their book. If he’d already gone from their eyes, then all that remained was to shed the last vestiges of himself in his own mind.

He’d already considered it a good idea not to think about Josh and Fran, so that he didn’t end up a quivering, blubbering wreck at the last moment.

And so, having rid himself of every good and warm past memory of Fran and Josh, all that remained was to cast off the rest: holding his hands up high after his first big boxing win, the pride in his mother’s face — still there even when he fell into bad ways, her refusing to accept it — Roddy’s sly smile as he told a joke or funny story, Sal in the library, BC in the muscle yard, passages from his favourite books… sharing a brandy with Jac McElroy that night . It didn’t take long, wasn’t too difficult, because there weren’t that many good memories left. Libreville had eroded most of them already over the years.

Footsteps echoing emptily . And as he took the last few steps towards the death chamber, of all the years that he’d heard his own footsteps echoing like a ghost’s through Libreville, only now was it finally in step with, fully mirroring, how he felt. Empty . Devoid of all memories, all feelings, all emotions.

Hands gently guiding him, laying him on the gurney. Hands of strong guards that could have pushed, but sensed in that moment that they didn’t need to.

Larry looked through the glass towards the observation room as he was strapped down: Warden Haveling, Father Kennard, the prison psychiatrist, one of the medic team, a Times-Picayune journalist who’d visited him the day before and Larry had agreed to have there.

And as the last strap was secured, Larry smiled gently towards his audience — they probably thought that he’d finally snapped, gone mad, or that he’d made some sort of inner peace in his mind and was looking forward to going to God… Ascension Day .

But the thought that had hit Larry in that moment was how he’d robbed them, cheated them. They’d put on this big event, this circus — Governor’s final thumbs down, scores of protestors and media trucks outside the prison gates, on every news channel with analysis and cross-analysis, pro and con death-penalty debates — to kill Larry Durrant.

But he’d robbed them of that privilege without them knowing it. The past long years at Libreville had already taken half the life out of him, and in the past hours he’d managed to strip and erode what was left. In the end, they weren’t killing Larry Durrant at all. They were killing just a shell.

Black. Everything black.

But gradually some grey started to wash through, as if a gentle light was trying to seep in, soften the edges. Make the darkness not so absolute.