Authors: Richard Farren Barber
The Sleeping Dead (12 page)
He understood the sleeping dead. He understood that eventually the despair was too great. Nothing could take this back, nothing could make this right. There was before and there was after. And after was too hopeless to consider.
He sat down on the tarmac in the middle of the road. Because what other option did he have?
20
It should have been possible to die there. Jackson didn’t understand the mechanics of the process, he didn’t understand how a person could simply sit down and stop living, but it should have been possible. It
had
to be possible.
But it didn’t happen. Jackson didn’t know why. He waited for the moment. He willed it to arrive. He closed his eyes and listened to each breath that passed through his lungs and he waited for each to be his last and for oblivion to sweep in and free him.
Maybe he didn’t want it enough, and the idea felt like a betrayal of Donna. If he had loved her more, then he would have been able to die. It didn’t matter if there was no afterlife. He wasn’t hoping to join Donna, he just wanted to be away from the churning sense of loss that burrowed through his chest.
He started to think about all the ways it was possible to kill himself. He thought about the bodies hanging from the stairwell in the office block and the trees in the park. He thought of the people facedown in the stream or swept away in bliss by the river. He thought about John Fairls and the bloody scissors and Malcolm Laine and the tuft of hair adhered to the window where he had smashed his head against the glass. There were many, many ways. All he had to do was choose.
Surely it was that easy…
He closed his eyes against the black husk of the house. Looking at the remains made it harder to think.
Donna was gone. Everyone was gone. There was no life to live. There was just…
this
. The constant battle to survive. Why? What for?
That’s right.
Jackson shook his head as if he were trying to dislodge a fly. The voice was a young woman’s, soft and persuasive. It could have been Donna’s, except he knew that it wasn’t because Donna…
Donna’s dead.
No, that wasn’t it. He almost snapped at the voice, told it that it was wrong. He knew it wasn’t Donna because…
She left you.
“No.”
Donna’s dead and she’s never coming back.
“I know that. I know that.” But that wasn’t why the voice had got it wrong, that wasn’t why he knew it wasn’t Donna. It was someone pretending to be her, because…
“Because Donna would never tell me to give up.”
He felt the voices redouble. They were inside him. Chattering. They had a manic urgency, no more of the pretense and the gentle persuasion, now they were hammering him.
Do it. Do it now. Why wait any longer? There is nothing left.
And they were right, Jackson knew they were right, except…
Except Donna would never have told him to give up. And whatever had happened to her, it had not been her own mind that had made the decision to strike the match that started the fire, any more than it had really been Malcolm Laine’s decision to jump through the window. They had been
forced
to do it. The voices had pushed them and pushed them until they had felt there was no alternative. But it had never been their choice. Not really.
He tried to stand up, but all the muscles in his body were still in thrall to the voices.
Give up. Why struggle?
“No.”
It’s easier this way.
Jackson reached out his hand. It was like trying to push away an ocean liner—an immovable object against a not-so-irresistible force. He laughed at the image, at the idea that Jackson Smith was able to change anything. In his head he heard the voices agreeing with this assessment. He could almost see them now—a crowd of people, pallid faces and blank eyes. No emotion, but nodding in agreement at the belief that Jackson Smith was no one, could do nothing.
True.
A schoolgirl with her black and red tie against her white blouse.
True.
A fat woman in her forties, her skin stretched to a tight sheen across her features.
True.
A businessman—it could easily have been Malcolm Laine or John Fairls or any number of men that Jackson had worked with—an ink stain blotting the bottom of his shirt pocket.
True. True. True.
Toneless voices piled one upon the other. Gray faces nodding.
Jackson’s hand moved. Just a fraction. He could hardly tell by looking at it, but he felt the rasp of the hard road surface under his palm that told him he was not imagining it.
He pushed again, and this time he
could
see the movement. The voices didn’t own him. Not yet.
“Are you okay?”
It took him a moment to recognize that this voice was different, that it didn’t come from inside him.
“Are you okay?” Susan asked again.
He tried to turn to look to her, but he couldn’t move.
“No,” he whispered. The word came out soundlessly, a slight breath. He opened his eyes and stared at the burned-out house. Susan was somewhere off to his right, he couldn’t see her but he could sense her presence beyond the edge of his vision. “No,” he tried again, but still his voice was too quiet.
He tried to move his hand again. Nothing. Frustration rose within him, bright and red and pure. And he welcomed it. It pushed back the gray.
He tried again. His whole body shivered with the effort, although Jackson was sure that from outside none of the fight would be visible; to Susan he was just sitting there staring at the house, no more alive than one of the sleeping dead.
Maybe his fingers moved a millimeter, certainly no more than that. He pushed again. And he felt the graze of rough ground against his skin.
“Don’t leave me.” The idea terrified him: that Susan would decide he was dead and she would move on. The possibility that he could be alone and expected to navigate this new world with only the voices for company.
“I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t do it.”
“What?” Susan asked. He stared straight ahead, but at the edge of his vision the gray outline of Susan came into view. He tried to turn his head to look at her, but he didn’t have the strength to move.
“What can’t you do?”
“I can’t cope on my own.” He didn’t know if Susan heard exactly what he said, but she must have learned enough from his tone. He felt her body press against him, the reassuring weight of her arm pressed against his shoulder.
He sat, watching the burned-out house, feeling the weight of Susan pressing against his side. He sat, and waited.
21
They stayed for more than an hour, long enough for the daylight to begin to fade. The breeze drew the scent of burning down the street and it washed over them.
For a long time Jackson didn’t try to move; he was too afraid that he would discover he couldn’t. But eventually he had to accept he could not always sit there staring at the house, they had to do something. Susan seemed prepared to wait as long as he needed. She hadn’t shown any desire to leave his side.
When he stretched out his arm, it felt like he was operating a robot. He could feel what he was trying to do and he watched to see if his limbs would react. He fell against Susan and felt her hands upon him, helping him. When he stood, he wavered like a tree caught in a high breeze.
“Are you okay?”
He nodded and turned toward her. “Thank you.”
She looked confused, and then surprised, and then finally she smiled.
Jackson’s vision rolled. For a moment everything blurred. The burned-out house quivered in front of him. “I know what it feels like,” he said. “I can’t explain it, not properly, but it felt like dying was the only outcome to wish for.”
“But you’re all right now?”
He shook his head. “I can still hear them.”
“You looked like one of them.”
“The sleeping dead?” Jackson nodded. “I probably was.”
He looked back at the burned-out husk of the house.
His
house.
“Donna’s gone.”
Susan nodded. “Probably.”
He laughed. Even to his own ears it sounded hollow and a little desperate. “Do you have to be so hard? Couldn’t you at least pretend like there’s a chance?”
“Why?”
He looked away. The black stains on the brickwork hurt his eyes. They looked like specters. Ghosts.
“So what happens now?” Jackson asked.
Susan held out her hand and he took it. Her skin was soft. Warm.
“We keep on walking.”
About the Author
Richard Farren Barber was born in Nottingham in July 1970. After studying in London, he returned to the East Midlands. He lives with his wife and son and works as a Development Services Manager for a local university.
He has written over 200 short stories published in
Alt-Dead
,
Alt-Zombie,
Blood Oranges
,
ePocalypse – Tales from the End, Murky Depths
,
Midnight Echo
,
Midnight Street
,
Morpheus Tales
,
MT Biopunk Special, MT Urban Horror Special, Night Terrors II, Siblings
,
The House of Horror
,
Trembles
, and broadcast on
BBC Radio Derby and Erewash Sound
.
Richard was sponsored by Writing East Midlands to undertake a mentoring scheme in which he was supported in the development of his novel
Bloodie Bones
. His novella
The Power of Nothing
was published by Damnation Books in September 2013.
His website can be found here:
www.richardfarrenbarber.co.uk
.
About the Publisher
DarkFuse is a leading independent publisher of modern fiction in the horror, suspense and thriller genres. As an independent company, it is focused on bringing to the masses the highest quality dark fiction, published as collectible limited hardcover, paperback and eBook editions.
To discover more titles published by DarkFuse, please visit its official site at
www.darkfuse.com
.
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