When All's Lost

The locket dangled from his fingers. In the failing light of dusk he had to strain hard to see the delicate image enframed within, but there it was. Smiling at him. Night was falling fast and soon he would need to retreat into his shelter, yet he kept his vigil. He kept his vigil even as the frost dug deeper into the earth and the wind lashed bitterly at his threadbare clothes. He bore these things because soon it would be dark and he dreaded the dark. Like a wild man who has stumbled on a treasure-hoard and scoops up armfuls of precious gold he cherished the few remaining strands of sunlight. By his meticulous calculations the moon would be fully waned tonight, and besides the clouds were rolling low and thick. There would be no possibility of seeing the image in the locket till dawn, and so he stared, seeking the kind of hope the relic offers the pilgrim.

He stared and all for nothing, he realised. No matter how ardently he looked upon the locket, it would not yield comfort. He came to acknowledge that the past from which the image was birthed was irretrievable, alien, lost, and he could not relive it for all the hours of gazing the sun might permit. It was hopeless. The slim orange crescent of the sun had descended into the horizon and the freeze had trenched its way into the darkened earth and air. The hoary, frost-hardened flesh of his hand was now totally insensible to the slim chain lapped around his fingers. He pocketed the locket and proceeded homeward through the ash.

Tucked away in the mouldering blankets of his improvised dwelling he lay down his trembling head and toyed with the locket in his hand. Soon, when fear and loneliness turned into drowsiness, he began to sleep. Sleep, he thought in his fatigue, was where the true past lay. In the mysterious folds of the mind were the dormant fragments of memories waiting to be activated by dreams. So in the damp and chill of his shelter he succumbed to slumber and anticipated some merciful reprieve. And it came.

In his dream he stood on a lone rock in a damp and draughty cavern, surrounded by a lake of frigid water revealing a slate, uneven lake-bed. An unearthly silence and stillness hung in the air. The scene set before him could have been a painting for all its inanimation. He felt lonely, scared, hopeless, and wondered if this was what awaited him in death. He felt the lingering chill biting in his bones. Not even the boundary of sleep could prevent that cruel element from seeping in.

Then all at once a spirit, real and warm to the touch, met him on his lonely rock. It entwined its limbs with his and held him in a shock of sensation as real as toothache or breathlessness. It was a feeling no earthbound memento could substitute. How sweet was the tender grasp. How readily his unhope flooded out of him like the backwash of an ocean wave. In that embrace the idea of a world where bleakness and despair reigned over all was inconceivable. But it was there, and it was ready to reassert itself. As if jealous of his happiness, the elements conspired to assail him. The calm waters of the lake stirred and hissed, and the spirit’s grasp reneged. Soon the waters were lapping at his feet, consuming the flesh as a bitter whirlwind howled about him. Joy faded from his chest and he ached with the loss of it. He felt brutalised.

He awoke with a start to find his feet moist and freezing. A keen whistling wind was droning over him: the window frame, he realised, had broken loose from its rotting hinges. He cradled his sopping limbs and looked around him. Darkness there. Nothing more. His body trembled with the cold and with a surging tide of despair. Soon he was sobbing, loosing cries into his folded knees. Then he was howling, his disused voice cracking like an old, untuned piano. He beat his tear-streamed cheeks until he drew blood. He felt sore and empty.

In his fury he tumbled on his side, and when the surge of his despair had abated for a while, he became sensible to an object interceding between his leg and the hard floor. Wearily he rummaged for it and finally produced a locket whose frame was broken and whose image had slipped halfway from its rightful place. In spite of the darkness he fumbled for the miniature image and liberated it. He felt the familiar surface, the smooth gloss of it. He began to rub it between his thumb and forefinger. He continued thus for a while, until his benumbed flesh grew hotter with the friction. He continued for longer, for the rest of the night, until naught was left but powder on his hands and lap. The wind carried the fine dust and scattered it, just as morning broke and orange light banished the dark.

He looked at the old dappled mirror that hung jaggedly over his washbasin. He stared at the matted hair, the embossed ridges of the eye sockets, the bruised and blood-caked cheeks. Could this really have been he? He reached for the muddy water in the basin and began to wash the blood wincingly from his face. So it was he, but a different one. One once dead and who had been newly baptised in cold and loneliness. He sighed and felt oddly at peace. Like all the others before him, he needed to die. Of that he was certain. But the idea did not strike terror in him as before. He was resolved. Nevertheless, there was something he had to take care of first.

Over half-hidden, pock-marked roads he hiked for days. He had found a pair of gloves in remarkably good condition on one of his tarries, and a winter coat to match. For shoes he could find nothing. His worn down boots would have to do. But then the cold was harsh that week and his toes became swollen and frostbitten. His coat could not save him when his rope-bound jeans let in the sharp unflagging wind. At several points he felt death at hand and lamented that he could not accomplish his mission in time. But he prevailed and trod on, his right hand stuffed guardingly in his pocket. After six days he arrived where he wanted to be. It was almost sunset.

The door of the house was no obstacle, for it had disappeared. So too had the window frames, the wooden fence. Anything that could be gathered and burnt, he surmised. He did not judge the poor souls driven to such theft, for there is no property when all are dead. In the gaping maw of the doorframe familiar darkness reigned. A hint of a banister winked at him from inside, but otherwise everything was pitch black, a strange corrupted womb. He proceeded into the house and ascended the stairs.

He lay down upon his old bed on the left side, closest the door. That was his custom in days gone by. He faced the other side of the bed and thought upon how she’d perished. He remembered with gladness that it was without pain, that she’d been insensible during the process. Her medical background was a saving grace then, a sure way to balk the coming suffering without suffering. She was a clever one, was she.

He cursed himself again for tricking her, for making her believe he was sharing their death when he was too afraid to follow her there. He bemoaned his carelessness – to leave the body unburied and let the bed eat her up. He was a coward then, in terror of death. He had yet to be vetted against pain and mortality. Nevertheless he was glad that the process of putrefaction was long since passed, with only a rank patch of solid decay on the sheets and mattress to testify to it. She was clean, a stone effigy of herself, without any flesh to tempt the wicked depredations of the wind and cold. He was happy about that. He shuffled closer on his side and embraced the slim ribcage. It was dark now.

From his right pocket he produced a locket whose frame was broken and whose image had disappeared. He placed it on the pedestal that was her sternum. Its rightful place. The slim chain, highlighted by the weak moonlight, tumbled rattlingly into her chest. He remembered when he had taken it from her. He remembered how, when he was on the verge of fleeing the room, he looked back at her still fleshly body and became overwhelmed with bereavement. He had to have something of her, to remember her by, to bring her back to him when he was lost and alone, a kind of talisman. So he slipped the locket from her placid bosom. He opened it to see the image of himself smiling at him. It was he as he was and he truly believed in its power to restore him in times of need. So he pocketed it and stole away, never to return till the years had swallowed her up along with the house. Now that he was back, he was ready to follow her – late, but ready.



Word count 1,570