No place like home

There's no place like Home by PJ Delaney

I looked out the window as soon as I heard the geese. I hadn't seen or heard a skein of them flying here since I was a child. I've always enjoyed watching geese flying by. Looking down on the world and taking their turns at the front to cut the air. There's a great sense of nobility in a dozen geese flying south, they come from the back of the house, circle and land down on the moorlands behind the trees. This isn't a lucky place, things disappear, but sometimes it can be beautiful, especially at this time of year, and I like this place.

I thought the sound of their calls might have been Jack coming back. I know that there's very little similar in sounds between wild geese and a child but there's very little noise except the wind here. This is a quiet place and it could well have turned out to be the sound of a small child.

The river at the bottom can't be seen from my window but it's still there alright; some days I climb the hill to the right of the house and the little silver river is still visible from there. I don't like leaving the house; I just don't like climbing the hill and being cold.

The view through the window today is stunning. Late autumn is the second best time to look down into the valley; it's when the golds and the reds of the dying leaves colour the trees around the swamp and the pasture meadows. The meadows rise slowly behind the river and go all the way up until they disappear into the hazed blue mountains.

I didn't miss Louise when she left, it wasn't completely unexpected. We'd been fighting and I knew she'd eventually leave, I just didn't know when. She left Jack behind her and I thought he'd stay. There was just the two of us. He was here for ages but, then one day, he just disappeared too. One day he was playing at the bottom of the garden, playing happily, then he didn't come back home. He was just gone; suddenly gone. People seem to just come and go.

This is the time of the year when the land begins its yearly sleep, rich in the colours of death, waiting for the storms that arrive every winter from the south-west, storms that come to strip back the trees and drive the last of the haze from the far mountains. I like it here at this time of year; the cold clears the miasma and brings everything a sense of clarity.

This is my place; I was born here and I belong here. There used to be a hamlet below, maybe nine or ten families. They're all gone now; gone a long time. They were gone a good hundred years before my time and it's just ruins left down there. There are, maybe three houses together and another five or six on the outskirts, all of them were once tidy thatched cottages that kept families dry and warm. All of the cottages lived and died down in the valley; innocent of electricity. The electricity, when it finally came, changed things here; it drove back the shadows and made the darkness bearable. By then, it was too late; the houses were all abandoned. The old people had died and their children moved on to other places, less beautiful places, safer places.

I don't go out at night, that would be stupid, but I used to have to go out to shoot foxes and check on sheep. I was younger then and more confident of the answers. I didn't understand what the dark was back then. That was long ago.

When people leave they don't just abandon their houses. They follow a process, they put galvanised sheets on the roof to cover the thatch and then they take out the door. The house becomes a shed; a cow-house. The cattle graze the sweet grass up to the swamp and shelter in the houses at night until the day that the roof and walls finally fall in; then the farmers drive away the cattle and bring in a flock of sheep that can shelter in the ruins. They never take the trouble to build the houses back up.

Looking out today, there's a drizzle starting, bringing down greyness and damp, all the colours today seem faded; it's real winter weather. The houses across on the mountain's foothills are starting to switch on lights. They're beginning to shine, sailing their way across the landscape, like lost ships.

There is something... something there... a shadow in the foreground; on the grass in front of the house. I just can't make out what... who it is... It isn't... It could be... Jack! He came back! I run to the door before he vanishes again and I recognised him. He's here. Sometimes things disappear. Not Jack. He's standing at the door; smiling at me. It's Jack... but he's changed... but it's still Jack, a different Jack but still. My Jack.

"Daddy, I kept looking for you but you weren't here."

He's not the same Jack though. His face is lined and now that I look at him... he's taller and thinner. The lines on his face are too deep. He looks sick; pale and sick.

"You can't stay here." His voice is different. Colder.

"I thought you were someone else..."

"I am someone else. But I'm still Jack. I'll always be Jack. I'm to bring you home. Louise is waiting. Everyone is waiting."

"I'm sorry. I thought I knew you." I said and I left the door. He kept on talking so I covered my ears.

"She said you'd be stubborn. Everyone is waiting!"

I ignored him... it. Whoever it was.

"Everyone else is waiting!"

He finally left.

It wasn't Jack. Jack was someone else, someone different. On clear winter nights I just lie here, listening to the wind howling and looking up at the stars. I belong here.

Nobody seems to come back.

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