Simon Clark - Humpty's bones

‘Curtis. You’ve got to get out.’

Another hand reached up from the floor to grip her thigh. ‘Curtis has set fire to the house.’ Heather couldn’t manage to rise from the living room floor. She coughed, desperately trying to draw air in the smoke-filled room. ‘He threatened to do it before… I warned you not to frighten him.’

‘Curtis. Let me take Heather outside. The smoke’s killing her.’

‘No, we’re staying… we’re staying. We’re going to watch those blasted bones turn to ash.’

There was a thud from elsewhere in the house and his face changed. ‘Where is it? I know it got inside.’

Mr Hezzle stood in the doorway trying to catch his breath, the thick smoke was choking him. ‘He’s in the room with the bones. He’s trying to save them.’

‘Get it out!’ screamed Curtis. ‘Get it out of my home!’

He lunged at Mr Hezzle, pushing him down. Disorientated by terror and smoke he grabbed the ornate walking stick from the stand in the hall then rushed down to corridor to the lab where the bones were kept — and the smoke was thickest. For one panic-driven moment he made one last attempt to tackle the figure that had broken into his house. He shouted hoarsely and waved the stick through the smoke. But his fragile courage only lasted a split-second. With a high pitched shout his nerve broke. He turned and blundered down the corridor, away from the lab. Eden tried to stop Curtis from hurting himself as he crashed against the walls, sending pictures flying and ornaments crashing to the floor in his desperation to escape.

‘No! No! Let go of me!’ Sweat poured down his face. His eyes blazed in pure fear. ‘Don’t let it touch me. For God’s sake! Let go.’ He pushed by, then scrambled out of the house, screeching like an injured pig.

‘Mr Hezzle.’ Eden made her way to where the man was slumped. She helped him up. ‘Get my aunt out of here. The smoke’s killing her.’

He seemed uncertain on his feet, so Eden went into the living-room, pulled her aunt upright, then made sure the pair supported each other as they moved unsteadily toward the back door.

Mr Hezzle coughed, his eyes were streaming; nevertheless, he called back, ‘Miss? Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to help him save the bones.’

He gave her a look that said all too clearly: Please don’t. Save yourself. But he knew the strength of her spirit now.

When Eden Page moved toward the lab it seemed as if she crossed a threshold. She passed from this reality of the house, one that burned because Curtis’s mind had snapped, to enter another reality; one that seemed misty rather than smoke-filled. The house became strangely quiet. When she stepped through the doorway into the room that contained the skeleton she saw a pool of burning petrol on the floor. Its brightness equalled a noonday sun in the breathless zenith of summer. A desperate figure strode back and forth. It longed to save the skeleton on the burning table; only its animal mind couldn’t tell it how. Instead it pounded its bare chest with the flat of one hand, while running its fingers through its hair with the other. She’d expected to find a heavy ape face — a kind of muscular gorilla visage; all black fur, thick curling lips, yellowing fangs. Instead, she saw a fine-boned face of immense delicacy. No facial hair; the teeth shone white. From that face a pair of wise yet wounded eyes were held by the spectacle of bones beginning to char on the table.

‘Let me help,’ she found herself saying in a gentle voice. ‘We’ll put the bones into this bag.’ She pulled a canvas sack from a shelf. Ancient pottery fragments began to pop with the heat. Eden extended her hand to take a thigh bone.

With a cry the First Man pushed her hand away. His fingers were long, tapering, the kind of fingers she’d expect belonging to a musician. Despite the way he’d torn away the house door from its frame, he wasn’t stockily built. The name First Man had prepared her for an ancient creature but this was a man in his youth. His face had a smoothness of a sculpted Apollo. His naked skin was clean; the hair on his head shone with health. True, his nose and brow were the dominant features of his face. However, there was nothing ugly or beastlike; instead he resembled one of those graceful statues found in museums; of beautiful youths in pure white marble that are eternally waiting for the gods to breathe life into their still bodies.

The heat reached a shelf of chemicals that Heather used to preserve her finds. Blue fire belched out across the ceiling. The First Man didn’t flinch. He needed to save the bones of his brother.

That’s all that mattered.

All he cared about.

His mind had gone, true, but an old love still endured.

Eden once more reached out to the bones. ‘I won’t damage them. I’m helping,’ she said firmly yet gently. ‘I know about you. I know that you won’t hurt me. You are good and wise.’

He watched her move the bones from the table to the bag. There was anxiety in his eyes. He tensed, as if at any moment he’d snatch the bones from her. But then he understood. This female stranger wasn’t causing harm. She was rescuing sacred treasure from the flame. For the first time he raised his eyes so they locked with hers.

Eden moved automatically. Her hand glided across the table to gently transfer the bones into the bag. At that instant, it seemed as if she watched her actions from outside herself. There, in the burning room, stood a woman by the name of Eden Page. Her fingers were scorched by heat. Smoke formed a dense fog. Yet still the slight form of the woman worked to save the ancient bones. Her features were smooth, untroubled, almost relaxed. And standing at the other side of the table, a tall figure. A man who had carefully husbanded his Gift for eighteen hundred years. A remarkable man, the last of his species, and possibly the first of another.

Eden placed the remaining skull fragments in the bag. Her mind floated free of its flesh now. It seemed as if she passed into a coma as she stood there. A drowsiness seeped through her veins to feed shadows into her head. Ancient vases exploded before the intense heat. Hot air currents made her hair stream upward. Yet Eden only heard the beat of her heart; her skin felt cool. The First Man stepped through the barrier of smoke. He reached out slender fingers to touch her face. A sensation of taking a cold, refreshing drink on a hot day passed through her; a thirst quenching draught. Instead of smoke, she smelt dew on a spring lawn. Then Eden had a vision of this man — this young-old being. Perhaps what she saw had actually happened, and he poured his own memories into her brain in a way she didn’t understand. The vision revealed images of the First Man and his kind living here in houses made of turf and thatch five thousand years ago. Then refugees reached here after being driven out of their homeland by tribal wars. The First Men welcomed the exhausted people that carried their starving children. They gave the refugees food, shelter and so much more. Then she saw the winter’s day when Roman soldiers marched along the newly built Via Britannicus to their provincial garrisons. A brutally cold morning, when Hezzle’s ancestors hacked open the frozen earth to lay something withered, yet still glorious into the ground. The last of the First Men sang with his neighbours as men refilled the grave. That cleft in the soil would never be completely sealed, however. It would receive gifts of coins for the next eighteen centuries. The walls of the house began to flow. Eden realised arms supported her; the First Man carried her out of the burning house. Cool rain soothed her scorched body. The sky was a tumult of black, green, grey and blue.