Humpty's bones

14. Friday Evening: 7.30

Thunder. Still no rain.

Curtis detested his day. He prowled; he snarled. Four times he made telephone calls. Complaints, expressions of frustration. With Curtis’s angry mutterings came more thunder. Plenty of thunder, a hollow sounding boom in the distance; the sound of massive barrier walls collapsing. When he poured himself a huge glass of merlot, the colour of blood in this half-light filtering through grim slabs of cloud, he made his fifth call.

‘Raj? Raj! You were going to get those damn court papers organised. No, that’s not good enough. I want Wayne’s ugly face in court. I want to see him go through hell after what he did to me.’ He touched his bruised eye. ‘Get it done Monday. Okay? That’s all well and good… yes… if the papers aren’t served next week you’ll be losing a valuable client. Goodbye.’ He glowered through the window. ‘Bloody weather.’ He emptied the wine down his throat then went for a refill.

Curtis jabbed a glance at Eden as she brought him a plate of sandwiches. He chose to interpret her expression the wrong way. ‘I can drink whenever I want. It’s my blasted house.’ He glared at his wife. ‘Even if my name isn’t on the deed, it’s still my home.’

‘Have you chosen a replacement for Wayne?’

‘I’ve been too busy dashing round sorting out all his cock-ups. Did you know he hasn’t bothered to confirm bookings for Thursday and Friday next week? The studio will be lying idle for two full days. At this rate we might as well rent it out to a farmer to store his spuds. We’d earn more.’ He drained his glass and refilled it again, reaching the end of the bottle. ‘Is it me,’ he muttered with no trace of humour, ‘or are wine bottles getting smaller? This didn’t last two minutes.’ He headed for the kitchen like he dearly wished he could find some underling there to thrash within an inch of their life.

More thunder broke across the horizon. Still no visible lightning; no rain either. The daylight took on a greenish tinge as it seeped through thick cloud.

Eden and Heather sat and looked at each other in silence. Each lost in their own thoughts.

Heather had taken several bites of her sandwich, and was chewing listlessly when she swallowed, frowned and stiffened. ‘He’s been a long time.’ She called out in the direction of the living room door. ‘Curtis? Everything all right through there?’ She stood up, ‘Curtis?’

Eden listened. ‘I think he’s gone through to your lab.’

On the word ‘lab’ Curtis punched open the door. His face seemed to pulsate with rage. ‘What the hell are you playing at with this?’ He brandished the fragments of skull that Eden had glued together. ‘Is it meant to be a joke? Is it?’

‘Curtis,’ Heather began. ‘I planned to tell you later. We’ve made a real breakthrough about this site. Did you know that nearly two thousand years — ’

‘I’m not interested. I’ve got real problems! I’ve got trouble with cash flow, with staff, with yawning great bloody gaps in studio bookings. All you do is make freaks out of old bones.’ He turned on Eden. ‘Idiot girl! I warned you about this ridiculous idea about werewolves and dog men. This is our home! Not a venue for your moronic, make-believe games.’

‘Curtis!’ Eden fired back with equal vigour. ‘It’s not make-believe. It’s not werewolves. Heather and I have found out about this place. It was sacred ground to the Romans.’

‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this. My business rates are overdue. I get assaulted by my own staff. And you babble about sacred ground. Listen, this is our home, an ordinary house built on ordinary dirt. And I’ve got to earn money to pay for its upkeep.’

‘But it is important. We found out that Heather’s mother was warned off from researching its history. The locals want to keep what happened here a secret.’

He brandished the section of rebuilt skull, with the thick eye ridge above vast eye sockets. ‘I’m warning you both. No more of this. Okay? Eden, there’s a train at eight in the morning. You’re going to be on it.’ He ripped the glued pieces of bone in two with his bare hands, his eyes blazed. At the same time, thunder smacked against the house like a bomb. ‘Now I’m throwing this in the bin. The rest of the blasted bones are joining it.’

He pounded out of the house. Heather ran after him, pleading that he calm down. Eden followed. A sense that events were running out of control gripped her now. The brakes have gone, she told herself. We’re falling over the edge. Curtis can’t control himself. He’s going to hurt someone… he’s going to hurt us!

Outside, the crash of thunder became even more violent. A cacophony that made Heather clutch the side of her head. They pursued Curtis across the garden to where he flung back the lid of the wheelie-bin.

‘You might as well watch this!’ Fury as well as drink flushed his face crimson. ‘I’m not taking any more!’

Before he could hurl the bones into the bin full of discarded cartons, pizza crusts, and potato peelings he stopped. His eyes looked past the women, locking onto something behind them.

Eden spun round to see what it was, only whatever it was moved far too swiftly. An impression of a flitting shadow; nothing more.

Curtis stared, his eyes bulging. Even he wasn’t sure what he’d seen. Only it had been enough to stop him dead. He’d gone from rage to silence in one second flat.

Heather had been the last to notice. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘Something came across the lawn,’ Eden breathed.

‘What?’

Curtis recovered from his surprise. ‘Eden, did you see that?’

‘Not clearly.’

His anger flared. ‘Some idiot ran through those bushes. What on Earth are they playing at?’ He’d forgotten all about the pieces of skull in his hand now. Instead, he advanced toward the shrubbery. Almost to himself he said, ‘But did you see how fast he ran? Like a hare!’

Heather caught her husband by the arm to prevent him plunging headlong into the vegetation. ‘Curtis, hold on. Did you see who it was?’

He shook his head. ‘I only half saw. Nothing properly. A shape… just a hell of a fast one.’

‘I’m glad I found you.’ A figure bustled through the garden gate.

Curtis groaned. ‘Hezzle. I should have known. If it’s one of your blasted mutts… ’

Mr Hezzle’s eyes were huge in his head. Even the weak one that had barely opened when Eden first met him seemed to poke right out from the socket, a veined orb with a fierce black pupil. ‘Back to the house… inside… quick!’

‘What?’ Curtis had no intention of moving.

‘Get into the house. Straight away… go on, get inside. Lock all the doors.’ Despite his advanced years, he ran past Heather’s excavation pit. ‘Inside, quick! Lock the doors!’

There was something about his manner. An utter conviction that somehow sent them back through the door into the kitchen. Mr Hezzle didn’t so much as follow as push them indoors. Once they were safely in he slammed the door shut behind them.

‘Lock it!’ He shouted so loud that the thunder seemed tame in comparison. Eden moved fastest, she shot the bolts across top and bottom.

Mr Hezzle sucked air through his large nose, his chest heaved. ‘Are all the other doors locked? Windows, too?’

‘What is this?’ Curtis spat the words. ‘This is my hou — ’

‘Lock them.’

‘I’ll do it.’ Eden flew round the ground floor. Fortunately all were locked. A moment later she was back in the kitchen to find Mr Hezzle drawing the blinds.

‘Hezzle. Tell us what on Earth is going on!’ Curtis was on the verge of committing violence.

‘He’s out!’ Mr Hezzle slammed his hand down on the kitchen table. ‘He knows you took the bones from the mausoleum!’

Curtis snarled. ‘Mausoleum? What the hell are you talking about?’

The old man turned to Eden, ‘The lass knows. She told me he came here this week. He sniffed at the doors. He could tell the bones were inside. She said he tried to break in.’

The eyes of her uncle and aunt flicked to the smashed security glass in the door.

‘It was just some local drunk,’ Curtis snapped. ‘Pay no attention to Eden here; she’s away with the fairies… as stupid as her scatter-brained mother.’ Both wine and emotion freed his tongue. ‘And you can get off my property, Hezzle. You outstayed your welcome a long time ago.’

Eden squared up. ‘Curtis, you’re the most arrogant man I’ve ever met. You think you know everything; in reality you’re as narrow-minded and as prejudiced as they come.’

‘That does it. Eden, I’ll drive you to the station.’

‘In that state? You’re drunk.’

‘Drunk? You little bitch.’

Heather squealed. ‘Something ran by the window.’

Curtis glared at the man. ‘His dog I suppose.’

‘No… ’ Heather turned to Mr Hezzle, her eyes huge with fear. ‘Mr Hezzle, what was it?’

But Eden answered first, ‘The First Man. That’s right isn’t it, Mr Hezzle?’

Heather gave a pained grunt. Her eyes stayed locked on Eden’s face as if she’d just screamed a blasphemy.

Curtis shook his head. ‘Here we go… ’ He grabbed the bottle from the table and poured himself another massive glass of red wine while muttering, ‘Welcome to the mad house.’

Eden approached the window. The garden lay empty beneath violent skies. Thunder bellowed again, fists of sound against her ears. ‘I’m right, aren’t I, Mr Hezzle?’ She spoke with a new self-assurance. ‘The First Man is out there. Does he bring the Gift?’

Her Aunt’s voice rose. ‘We identified those bones as Homo Prima, the First Man. The deformed skull.’ She gave an odd-sounding laugh. ‘How can that be the First Man out there. He’d have to be nearly two thousand years old?’

‘The girl’s an idiot.’ Curtis’ attention was on his wine glass and he took a large gulp of the merlot.

Mr Hezzle’s wise eyes regarded Curtis with nothing less than pity. ‘You should listen to your niece, Mr Laird. She is intelligent.’ He sighed. ‘More intelligent than the pair of you put together.’

A huge crash of thunder rattled the house. On the shelf the crockery trembled. Curtis chuckled and gestured with his glass. ‘Take her to live with you, then. But be careful who she brings home for a one night stand. Her lovers have a reputation for starting fires. She’ll bed the — ’

He didn’t finish the sentence. Eden snatched the glass from his hand then dashed its contents at his head. Blood red wine streamed down his face and dripped from his nose.

‘Good work, Miss.’ Mr Hezzle nodded with approval. ‘It might wake him up enough to open his eyes properly for the first time.’

‘I’ve never hit a woman before — ’ Curtis began ominously.

‘Why don’t you make the effort to see yourself as other people do?’ Eden told him in contempt. ‘No wonder Wayne slapped you.’

‘I’m warning you!’ He screamed the words. ‘You and Hezzle have gone too far.’

Eden paused as she realised a vital truth. ‘I know what’s got into you. You aren’t angry, Curtis. You’re scared.’

‘Rubbish.’

‘You’re frightened of what’s out there.’

‘No.’

‘Listen to your niece,’ Mr Hezzle said in a low voice. ‘Like I said, she’s intelligent. She knows.’

‘Ridiculous… I’m not frightened. She knows nothing.’

Eden’s confidence grew. ‘Curtis you are frightened. Because you’ve got a secret, haven’t you?’

He looked at her, his mouth opening and closing as if he was lost for what to say next.

‘There have been times at night,’ Eden continued, ‘when the moon is shining… you’ve seen a figure moving through the fields. You watched and not told a living soul. But you saw a man. You noticed the shape of his head… it didn’t look right to you… only you didn’t tell anyone, did you?’

Curtis’s appearance was that of a hunted man. His eyes became shifty as if he searched for an escape route.

Heather stiffened, ‘Curtis, is this true?’

Eden said, ‘That’s why he doesn’t like the house; he rationalises it as Dog Lands being too far from the studio in York. And that’s why he drinks too much. He wants to sleep so soundly that he never gets up during the night to look out of the window to see what might be out there.’

Curtis swallowed and rubbed his face with his hand, smearing away the wine.

‘Listen to your niece, Mrs Laird. What she says is true.’

‘Of course it’s true,’ Eden lifted her voice above another rumble of thunder. ‘What’s made it all worse for Curtis is that I’ve given a name to the figure he’s glimpsed in the fields. The First Man. What’s more, he now has a history. He was revered by the Romans. He had a mission. Now he’s returned to complete that mission. To offer humankind the Gift. Heather, it might seem contradictory, but the fact of the matter is the bones of the First Man are in the lab, yet the First Man is out there in the garden; he’s searching for a way into the house.’

Curtis flinched, and his eyes shot to the bolted door.

Eden leaned forward to peer through the kitchen window. Winds tugged garden bushes. The gazebo that covered the pit had toppled. The storm was almost here. Another huge crash of thunder echoed around.

Heather gripped Eden’s elbow. ‘But how can this thing both be in the house as bones, and outside as a living creature?’

Eden glanced at Mr Hezzle, an invitation to supply the answer.

‘You’ve done a good job so far, Miss. You tell her.’

Eden nodded. ‘Because the First Man wasn’t a single individual. I’ve been working it out. He didn’t suffer from a deformity of the skull. He was completely normal. At least as far as his own species is concerned he was. As I say, the First Man isn’t a solitary person. There was a group of males living here on this very spot.’

‘What?’ Heather looked on the verge of fainting. Curtis plumped down onto a chair.

‘They were from a race of hominids — those ancestors of ours that were referred to as “ape men”. But they weren’t especially ape-like. They’d just evolved differently to Homo sapiens. As their numbers dwindled they interbred with the local people. Look at Mr Hezzle. The structure of his nose is different to ours. Now, other people would rudely comment that he’s got a considerable nose. But look at the shape of it. Notice his eyes. The bones beneath the eyebrows are more prominent. Yet his jaw line is extremely fine. Almost delicate. While just outside is one of the First Men.’

Heather asked in a weak voice, ‘Mr Hezzle, is this true?’

He nodded. ‘Out there is the last of his line. He can smell the bones.’ The old man turned to face the direction of the lab. ‘Something in me can, too.’ His nostrils flared as he inhaled. ‘It’s like the skeleton is calling to us… a cry through the years.’ His eyes watered. ‘In a way I can’t properly describe, I hate it. That cry is terrible… it’s full of hurting, so full it makes me hurt, too, inside… but it makes me want to answer the call.’ He regarded the three of them, his face grave. ‘Rationally, I know it’s coming from him outside. Yet he has this way of making his voice appear from other things… like from those bones. Sometimes when he calls, it comes out of the fields, out of the air, or even out of a storm like this. And he can plant ideas inside your head. Sometimes you dream his dreams. You find yourself knowing certain facts about him, about his history here over the last two thousand years or more, and you wonder how you could possibly have learnt all that information. That’s his doing again. He has the power to feed knowledge directly into your brain. How does he do this? I can’t rightly say. But he’s got some telepathic way of making you know what he knows… only it’s disordered… random… it can seem as if there’s a madness starting inside of you.’

He paused, and the first flicker of lightning lit the windows, throwing them all into stark relief before a huge clap of thunder rolled around the lowering skies.

Curtis attempted to sound like his old angry self. He picked up the two parts of the skull; the First Man’s. ‘Does it come out of these? The voices? Those fabulous airy-fairy notions!’ He banged them down onto the kitchen table.

The second he did so, a shape hurled itself from the green gloom outside to slam against the back door. Through white fragments of shattered glass, held in place by the plastic membrane, all they could make out was a shape — a dark, angry shape driven by pure rage. The door jerked on its hinges. Heather screamed. Even Mr Hezzle flinched. Frightened into submission, Curtis gasped, ‘My God,’ and with shaking hands managed to pour himself another glass of wine. The figure charged the door again. It held… just.

Eden hurried to the table.

‘He wants this!’ She picked up the sections of skull.

‘Miss, you don’t know everything about him. Even though he might have been feeding information into your head. There are dangers — ’

‘I do know that the First Men were the kindest and wisest men in the world. Your ancestors knew it; the Romans recognised them for what they were. The First Men were identified as having the entire pantheon of gods dwelling inside of them. What’s more, he’s been entrusting his knowledge to me without me ever realising it. Ever since I came here, I’ve had the strangest dreams. My mind began to work in a way that it’s never done before. I understand so much about him without being told.’ Eden smiled, her face growing rapturous. ‘Can you imagine the impact of the First Man on the human race? He can elevate humankind into a new species — one that will have a longer life… no, more than that: a better quality of life. Now, the last one is outside. He’s here to deliver the Gift’

Curtis trembled. ‘What’s she talking about?’

‘Curtis. Thousands of years ago ancient people realised that if they interbred with the species of man-like creatures known at the First Men the children produced by that union would be more intelligent, highly resistant to disease, and have much longer life-spans. They realised that together they could produce a superior breed of humans.’

Mr Hezzle waited anxiously for a moment, expecting another violent assault on the door again. When the creature didn’t return he pulled out a chair. ‘Mr Laird. Sit down, please. There are things I have to tell you. This notion of interbreeding two species goes back two thousand years. Even now it would be considered revolutionary — nay, utterly terrifying to the outside world. That’s why down through the centuries the villagers kept the existence of the First Men a secret. And that Homo sapien women were bearing the children of the First Men. Here we are, in a little Yorkshire village, creating a race of super humans simply by making love. Yes, indeed, children were born. They enjoyed long life-spans, their intelligence was higher. When bubonic plague swept the country, or there were outbreaks of cholera or smallpox those cross-bred individuals were immune. I’m one of the few remaining products of that particular experiment. I’m one hundred years old. I’ve never had so much as a common cold. And I daresay I could complete The Times crossword a sight faster than anyone here. However, we were fearful in Dog Lands. We knew that in centuries gone by the Church would have exterminated us if they discovered a new species of Man living in their midst. We’d be condemned as abominations. The Devil’s bastards. That fear also resulted in us being extremely reluctant to move out of the area. We stayed put in Dog Lands for generation after generation. Consequently, a small gene pool resulted in inbreeding, which led to such a low fertility rate that by today our brave new race of men has dwindled to half a dozen geriatrics, myself included. So you see, our great world-changing experiment has failed. And failed woefully.’

‘In that case,’ Eden said, ‘we should invite somebody else to join this debate.’ With a thrill of excitement she crossed the kitchen. ‘And he wants his kinsman’s skull.’

Eden threw the top bolt open.

Mr Hezzle flinched. ‘No, whatever you do, don’t open that door!’

The lower bolt was removed and Eden turned and looked at them, a look of triumph on her face before she raced outside into the whirl of storm winds. Thunder pounded the house. She smelt electricity in the air. A wild, savage force that promised violent death in its touch.