30 Stories in 30 Days

Boy

David Wellington

His head spins when he stands up too fast, but he can’t lie down any more. The dew on his arms and legs makes them feel stiff. He walks. The trees are heavy with rain and when the wind blows the branches sway from side to side, and water splashes on his face and his shirt. He holds his tongue out as he walks to catch the falling drops. He hasn’t eaten anything in three days, and can’t remember what he did eat then.

There is a castle.

The main entrance has collapsed in a pile of boulders speckled with green and black. Tall reedy grass grows between the rocks. There’s no way in there, but a tower at the side has fallen down on one side exposing its insides, its flat bones. He has to climb over some rocks to get up there, but they’re not as big, and mostly dry, so he only slips a couple times. Inside the base of the tower grass and some small trees have grown through the floor, lit up by a stripe of sun. There are steps going up and some of them have cracked or broken away but they are made of stone and they hold his weight. There are narrow glassless windows he can look through to see if anyone is coming. No one is. He goes up to the top, to a flat roof with battlements. A pool of ruffled water fills the shadows up there and he drinks. He is very hungry. Some furry moss grows on the stones and he scrapes at it with his dirty fingers, pulls it away in long strips and puts it in his mouth. It tastes like dirt, but he doesn’t stop. He gags it down, washes it down with more cold brown water. Eats until he feels weak. Then he lies on his back on the sunny part of the flat roof and puts his arms across his eyes. His head stops spinning, but his stomach doesn’t feel right. It feels like hands are pushing outward from inside. He is very weak but he manages to roll over and throw up, a long line of green across the stones. It coats his mouth and his tongue and he throws up again. Then he rolls onto his back and just tries to breathe normally. Afterwards he feels even weaker than he did before.

There is a house built inside the castle walls.

When he feels strong enough he works his way around the curtain wall and down into the house, which is built into one wall, facing a broad and empty courtyard. From the top level of the house, which is ruined, he can look down on the courtyard and see it was paved once with cobblestones but now is mostly tall grass. Beyond the courtyard he can see that the far wall of the castle has fallen away. Beyond that he can see the sea. It is grey and quiet and it rolls toward him, always toward him. It makes his head spin to look at it. He goes down inside the house. The next level down is partially intact. There is a library room full of old books. He touches the spines, running his finger down one whole row. The old leather parts like custard, leaving his finger green and red. The gilt letters on the spines hold them together a little but then they collapse, too, leaving bright dust on the floorboards. There was a carpet in the library once but rats have eaten most of it.

The next room he finds is a ballroom with broken chairs along the walls. The chairs have been broken up for firewood, and their legs lie stacked near a massive hearth, their feet out like dead animals. Green spots have bloomed under the varnish on the wood. He hears a noise like a chain being drawn over stone and he screams and runs from the room, down the stone stairs to the lowest level, where a lone pigeon flaps in disgust and flies away through a large broken window. He finds the darkest shadow he can and hides inside it with his knees in his arms. All that afternoon he watches an oblong beam of sunlight crawl across the floor, eating up the dust that swirls in the air. His nose runs but he doesn’t dare wipe it. The chain sound doesn’t come back, but he thinks he knows what made it.

There are ghosts inside the house.

If he doesn’t eat soon he is going to die, the boy thinks. He doesn’t know what it will feel like to be dead. Maybe the spinning in his head will just go faster and faster until he can’t see anymore, until everything is just one long blur. Things will continue to move, the sun will still light up the stones but he won’t be able to follow it, because for him time will have stopped. Or maybe it will just be dark and worms and insects will crawl under his clothes in the dark. He has to have some food.

Going up the stairs he is very careful, and slow, his hands touching the risers in front of him. Once he stops and stands very still for a long time, just breathing. Eventually his head comes back and he can’t remember why he stopped. He goes back up to the second floor, to the ballroom. He walks over to the hearth and touches the stacked legs of wood, waiting for some sign but there is none. It’s almost dark. A single patch of sun lies on the stone floor, a rectangle that is just starting to turn red. He has forgotten how to pray, if anyone ever taught him, but he has good instincts. Kneeling down in the patch of sun he folds his hands before him. “Please,” he says out loud, and the word echoes around the rafters. He has not spoken in a long time and the noise he makes feels wrong in that quiet place. It feels like an intrusion. He has to go on, though. “Please, I’m so hungry,” he says. Then he gets up and walks out of the patch of sun. He finds some cushions amidst the broken chairs, and a couple of them are not wet or slimy to the touch with mold. He makes a little bed for himself. It’s possible, he thinks, that if he falls asleep there, in that place, he will not wake up. He falls asleep.

In the morning he wakes to find himself staring into the eyes of a deer. It is a very young deer, with only stubs of antlers sticking up from its head. The deer does not move as he crawls closer. When he gets close enough he sees that its neck has been twisted around. He touches the deer’s neck and feels the bones in there loose and cracked, lumpy under his touch like a box of popcorn. At first he doesn’t know what to do. He gets up and drinks some water from a window box where flowers used to grow. Then he goes down the stairs. He goes back up, looks at the deer. He shouldn’t leave it there, he knows. The ghosts wouldn’t like that. Holding its two front feet together in his hands, he drags the deer down the stairs, all the way down. He is so hungry he considers eating the deer raw but he remembers from somewhere that can make you sick. There is a cellar below the ground floor and down there is a kitchen. It has a massive black iron stove and shelves and shelves of cardboard boxes that used to hold food but now are empty, long since emptied by rats. He finds a block full of knives, and tries to cut the deer’s side. He hits a bone and his arm shakes. Then he cuts around the bone. He cuts out a long strip of meat, very bloody, and cuts away the skin. He finds a frying pan and puts it on top of the stove. There is plenty of wood, small sticks for tinder and bigger split logs in a brass tender. He fills up the stove with wood of different sizes. In the back of a cabinet that is otherwise empty he finds a tube that opens up and inside are matches. The heads of the matches are covered in wax. He strikes a couple on the flagstones without success, then realizes that the top of the tube is made of sandpaper. He strikes one there and it flares into life. Soon the stove is lit. He cooks his steak too much, because he doesn’t know how to judge doneness, but it’s okay. It tastes like charcoal on the outside but the inside is still red and the blood runs down his cheeks. Afterwards he waits a long time but does not throw up. He drags the rest of the deer into the pantry and closes the door, puts a loose stone against the bottom of the door to keep rats out. Later that day he goes back up to the ballroom and says thank you.

If he is very quiet and still, he can talk to the ghosts.

He can see them, when they want to be seen. Sometimes very early in the morning, before he makes his breakfast. They are invisible where the sunlight touches them but in the shadows they are as glassy and as membranous as jellyfish under the sea. They have faces. They have the chains they drag behind them everywhere they go. They do not move like people. Talking to them is not like talking with your mouth, but with your head, and the things they say do not always make much sense to him. Their words drift like smoke across the ballroom floor. He asks them many questions.

Are you dead?

Oh yes, for many years.
Dead and rotted, our remains lie underground.
No, not entirely. Something remains.

Am I dead? Is that why I can see you?

No.
You’re very much alive.
Do you want to be?

What’s it like, being dead?

It’s very quiet. Peaceful.
I prefer the alternative.
Dead is dead is dead. Never anything different, and every day the same.

Why do you drag those chains?

We always have.
Chains to hold brains. We sleep in the drains.
They are what keep us here. What keeps you here?

There’s food here. Food you killed for me. Why did you feed me?

Because you were hungry.
Because we remember hunger.
Because we like you.

It takes all afternoon to have a conversation with the ghosts. There voices are very soft. They sound like dust pattering on the furniture of an empty room. Later the boy goes back down to the kitchen and cuts himself a steak for dinner. The deer’s eyes are clouded over. They weren’t like that before. After dinner he sits among the battlements of the ruined tower, his legs dangling down over the edge, and watches the sun set over the water.

The ghosts teach him many things.

In the library he takes apart a book. The spine curls off in his hand and he sets it aside. The pages stick together but if he is very careful and patient he can peel them apart, one from the other. Then he lies them in sunny parts of the floor to dry. The ghosts told him which book to read first. When he picks up the dry pages they crinkle in his hands but don’t break. He can read them, keeping careful track of the page numbers. It is a book for little children, using very simple words, but still he has trouble. He has been away from school for a very long time. When he finishes with each page he places it carefully on top of a pile of the pages that went before. He makes the pile as square and neat as possible.

Down in the courtyard he finds a ball. It has a hole in it and won’t keep its shape, but he kicks it from one side of the yard to the other, always careful not to kick it over the edge where the wall is broken. The ghosts like it when he plays there, so he keeps it up until he sweats and his breath comes fast. I’ll play for longer, tomorrow, he tells himself. The ghosts hear. He puts the ball in a place he’ll remember and then he goes over to the broken wall and looks down. He has not done this before. He gasps to look so far down, to a very narrow beach at the bottom of a steep cliff. Seaweed grows on the rocks down there, long and black, and it curls in the saltwater as it runs back and forth. You would die if you fell down there, he thinks, and then he thinks yes. And he thinks is that what you want? And then he thinks no.

One of the ghosts was a cook. A very long time ago, but he remembers how it’s done. He shows the boy how not to burn the meat in the frying pan. Another day he shows the boy how to gather certain kinds of grasses from the stone walls of the castle, and crumble them in the pan, and how to scrape salt from the rocks and add that as well. It keeps the meat from tasting so sour. Eventually that trick doesn’t work anymore.

The boy can’t eat the deer fast enough. Parts of it he doesn’t want to eat at all. The guts, and much of the head, have turned dark and smell cheesy when he pushes on them. When he pushes on the deer’s stomach a black liquid, which smells very bad, comes out of its bottom. That night he eats only a bite of his dinner and then has to rush to a gap in the wall so he can be sick. He forces himself to eat the rest, because there is nothing else, and he manages to keep it down. The next morning he can’t eat at all, and his head feels very hot, though he thinks it’s very cold outside. He throws up some more. Then he goes back to sleep.

The next day there is a cat lying in the sun patch in the ballroom, with its neck twisted.

He understands. He thanks the ghosts. It’s a lot of work to carry the deer carcass to the ruined wall, and it leaks on the flagstones as he pulls it along. There are flies in its mouth, though, and white little things crawling in its stomach. He pushes it over the edge and it falls a very long way. Then he takes the cat down to the pantry and cuts off all its skin.

There were no more deer.

No.
They don’t come as close as they used to.
They know what will happen.

The cats will learn, too. Then there won’t be any more.

They come for the rats.
The cats eat the rats.
Cats eat rats you’ll eat rats.

Then the rats won’t come, and I’ll be hungry.

Then you’ll hunt for yourself.
We’ll teach you.
If not, then you’ll come and be with us.

He’s almost out of matches.

The salt runs out and he has to eat the cat meat anyway. He cooks it longer, because he thinks that will help. At night he walks the battlements on the land side, looking for deer. He thinks he could make a bow and some arrows. There are no deer, though. At night he walks and the ghosts walk with him. He can’t see them, but he can hear their chains. During the day he plays with his ball. He gets very tired sometimes and he knows that’s because he isn’t eating any vegetables. The ghosts show him some grains he can pick but he has no way of making any bread. He boils sea oats in a pot and chews them very well but they stick in his throat.

The weather changes and grows colder. His clothes are torn and very dirty, but there’s no soap to wash them with. He tells himself there will always be more rats. He puts the cat bones out around the walls, ties their tails to the broken window frames. More rats come, though not as many as before. It snows one night, and the courtyard looks like a great iced cake. He plays in the snow for a long time but the cold makes him hungrier. He wraps himself in the rat-eaten carpet from the library, and sleeps in the kitchen with the stove burning wood.

One night someone else comes to the castle.

The boy wakes in the darkness and holds his breath. He can hear steps on the tower stairs, but no chains. He listens for the soft voices of the ghosts but the wind is much louder. Careful to be silent himself, he climbs up the stairs to the battlements. A man is coming up through the top of the ruined tower. The boy knows the man has come for the same reason he did, because he is hungry. The man’s clothes are almost as dirty as the boy’s, and he has a thick beard that shines in the moonlight. His eyes are very small but they glint. “You,” he says. “Come here. Come over here.” The boys stays where he is. The man takes a step closer, then another. He runs at the boy. The boy runs but he’s not fast enough. The man grabs him up and holds him tight and breathes on the boy’s cheek. His breath is very bad. “There must be food here. You’re not as skinny as you should be. Show me the food.”

Together they eat rats. The man does not complain about the poor fare. He asks the boy a lot of questions, but the boy doesn’t know how to answer. He never talks to the man. Eventually the man says, “You must be dumb, eh? It doesn’t matter. I don’t like a lot of back talk anyway.” He forces the boy to show him around the castle, to show him every room. When the boy hesitates the man grabs his arm very hard, or slaps him on the ear, which hurts a great deal. The man finds the stack of chair legs by the hearth in the ballroom and says he wants a fire. The boy knows the ballroom is supposed to be cold, always, for the ghosts, but he is afraid, so he piles the chair legs in the hearth and uses one of his last matches to get a fire going. The man laughs and rubs his hands over the flame and tells the boy to make him a bed of chair cushions. The boy does so. In time the man falls asleep, and the boy lies very still and stares at the vaulted ceiling and tries to talk to the ghosts. It takes a long time for them to answer, and even then their voices are so soft and they say so little he’s not sure if they’re really there.

He shouldn’t be here.

No.
No.
Never.

In the morning the man wakes up and demands breakfast. There is very little in the pantry. It won’t be enough for two people, not for very long, and the man eats more than the boy. “We’ll pack up what’s left and move on,” the man says, when the boy shows him how little left there is. “This place stinks anyway, and these walls can’t keep out the cold.” The boy doesn’t want to go with him but the man insists. “Somebody’s got to take care of you. I’ll allow, you’ve done fine for yourself so far. It can’t last, though. There’s people I know who can raise you up proper. They’re starving, well, everybody’s starving now, with the blight and then the drought. No child should be living alone, though. That’s just common sense.” The boy almost tells the man that he is not alone. He catches himself, though, and says nothing.

The man makes a bundle of the remaining meat and a few things from the kitchen he thinks might be valuable. He doesn’t even look at the books. “We’ll head south, along the coast,” he says, “and hit town in a couple of days. Come along.” The boy shakes his head, though, and runs out into the courtyard. His feet make crunching noises on the snow. The man comes after him, not too fast. The boy picks up his deflated ball and the man laughs. “Got your treasures, do you? Don’t want to leave them?” The boy shakes his head. He looks over his shoulder. “Is something there?” the man asks. The boy walks backward, toward the ruined wall. He climbs up on a pile of loose bricks and looks down. The man follows. “What is it? Is it something shiny? These places are always said to be full of lost gold. Did you find something? Or have you been hiding food from me? I won’t be cross. Just tell me.” The boy looks down at part of the brick pile. The man comes chasing after him. The bricks are very loose back there. The man comes farther toward the boy, then passes him. “What is it, son? Where have you hidden it?” Then the boy kicks the man in the leg. The man roars upward but the bricks are too loose and he totters. He nearly falls. Catches himself with his hands. The boy kicks his hands.

He sleeps in the ballroom that night. He listens for the ghosts but they are silent. Something has changed. He does not know if the man is with them now. He does not know if the ghosts will ever talk to him again. He eats the last of the meat, and does not know what will come next. Later, when he isn’t so scared, the boy climbs down the cliff. It is not easy. He has a knife in one pocket. He has to find his own food now, he knows.

The ghosts are very proud of the boy. They have taught him well.