Skeletal (28 page)

‘She kept it safe for a new generation to benefit from it. And you lost it.’

My mother is only five foot four. She barely scrapes the heights of average. But in that moment she towered over everyone in the room. She used the strength and the truth and she was a giant in that room.

‘See,’ the Grey Man whispers to me again, ‘See how this works out.’

He spreads a scene in front of me. Unravels the future and the past and all of the tiny pieces in-between. He shows what’s followed up and revealed and researched and verified. How research notes from a lost manila folder in an unmarked grave are recovered and put to use. How they work to save the lives of people who would otherwise die. How they’re used to lock up the people who did wrong, and free the lives of people who did right.

I blink in wonder as the world unravels in front of me like a long tapestry. A long tapestry that I can see my own thread in, tying together the different scenes of wonder and joy and brilliance that would otherwise have remained disjointed and worthless.

And if I had eyes I would cry, and if I had a mouth I would laugh, and if I had hands I would clap them in joy.

And instead I watch these final things unfold in my dying mind as I lie on the dirt ground underneath the floorboards of a house no one cares enough to finish, in a body no one cares enough to find.

And in my last moment the Grey Man’s arms fold me tight, he beams the truth into me, I give a prayer of thanks to Mum, and I smile.

Katherine Hayton is a shy reticent genius

who doesn’t like to be put in the spotlight.

She has lived in Christchurch her entire life,

and currently resides two blocks away

from the house in which she was born.

Skeletal is not her first novel.