The Soulless Man, page 1
Contents
Title page
Disclaimer
Chapter One - Winter
Chapter Two - Swim
Chapter Three - Sash
Chapter Four - Mr Hardy
Chapter Five - The Lakes
Chapter Six - Fayre
Chapter Seven - Mr Johns
Chapter Eight - Chase
Chapter Nine - Back in the Cafe
Chapter Ten - Beach
Chapter Eleven - Library
Chapter Twelve - The Catcher
Chapter Thirteen - An Ending
Back page
The Soulless Man
A novella by
Innes Richens
ISBN: 978-1-7398607-1-4
The right of Innes Richens to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. The author’s use of names of actual persons, living or dead, and actual places is incidental to the purposes of the plot and is not intended to change the entirely fictional character of the work.
Cover design from burconur via fiverr.com
Copyright: 2021 Innes Richens
Published by: deadhand
www.innesrichens.co.uk
All rights reserved.
CHAPTER ONE
Winter
THE HEAT OF the summer’s night clings to the walls of my room. From outside, through the small attic window, the distant tumble of the stream that runs down this narrow valley brings into this suffocating space the promise of cool air. The curtain, half drawn, does not lift, it hangs in the heat, heavy with it. There is a sheen across my chest, a thin dampness to the touch and my skin holds the sun of the previous day. I feel it rising from beneath the sheet, smothering my face. I push the sheet down to my waist, hoping for cooler air but the room has become bloated with this summer night. Everything is still, waiting, holding itself. My breathing is shallow and I slide my hand down to my belly, holding it there gently, feeling the slightest murmur of my heart, the rise and fall of my breath.
I open my eyes. The dark is still there. Gradually it softens and I see the outline of the window, the four small square panes and beyond a deeper night. The land stays silent as the summer spreads like honey. I focus on the sound of the stream, bringing the lightness of it into my head, willing it to lend the coolness of its water to my skin.
Eventually, I feel the skin beneath my hand ease away from the heat. Then – oh joy – the thin curtain seems to shift. I watch it, wondering if it was a trick of the light. It moves again, the light tendrils of a breeze across my chest, the faintest running of air. A summer breeze has found our small valley and begins to run between the houses, gently teasing at the windows.
The room’s stale smell of fabric, old carpet, dust and adolescence is gently teased apart and I can smell the land beyond, the meadows and fields, the trees of the thin copse that threads its way up the valley lane. The curtains lift again, a definite movement now, I hear the fabric brush against the frame. I take the first deep breath and close my eyes, floating into half sleep, my body both woken and assured by the shifting of the heat. The stream is a constant gentle rhythm, it expands in my head until it fills my senses and follows me into sleep.
Cold. The unfamiliar sting of it, the confusing grip of it on my shoulders, across my lips. I am awake before I open my eyes, instinctively clutching to draw the sheet up over my bare skin. I open my eyes.
The room is brighter and at first I struggle to understand what it is that is making it so. It is not the light of dawn, it is harder than that, fixed, determined. Everywhere in the room, there is a cold blue light carefully coating my desk, the bookcase, the chest of drawers. My eyes focus out of their sleep. There is ice everywhere, a thin hard coating of it covers the room. Patches of it mark the carpet and when I pull at the sheet I disturb a thin coating that has settled over me. It's shards and fragments are shattered around me, between the shape of my legs. My breath frosts in the air. I sit up, instinctively reaching for the bedside light but I pause and don't switch it on. Everything is still and a fear of flooding it all with artificial light stops me. The absence of the stream’s constant tumbling deepens the silence. Nothing moves. My skin has tightened across my chest, my breathing is shallow. I move, the cold pushing me out of bed. I grab for the clothes that are on the battered chair in front of the bookcase. They are cool, damp, a slight brittleness as I first touch them however they soon warm me and I begin to think more clearly.
I wonder if the whole house has been covered in this thin, new ice and I slowly open the bedroom door. The narrow stairs that lead down to the main landing stand cold and silent, the handrail glistening with patches of frost, mould-like in their creeping shapes across the wood. I can feel the carpet crunch gently beneath each step as I carefully descend, aware that it is still night, that my parents and brother are in nearby rooms, not wanting them to wake to this, feeling that – somehow – I would be blamed, that it would then be the family’s drama, removing it from me, my own private experience. I suddenly remember the dog. She sleeps in the small hall, near the back door. Part of me wants to get her, her presence confirming this is happening, lending me some sense of security.
The main hall is glittering, the ice catching what must be moonlight, steady and pale, coming through the arch of the window above the front door. The house at night is another place, empty of the lives that fill it with movement and noise. The place waits, colour is muted shadows. The ice covers everything - even the pictures of racing horses, their bodies broad, rectangular, each leg awkwardly, improbably arranged, the frosted glass distorting the uneven shapes.
I am aware I do not know why I have come downstairs, where I am going. The door to the lounge, the front door, the stairs behind me, these all present me with a decision I have not anticipated. The night remains silent, giving no explanation, and I stand in the small hall on a rug glistening with a heavy frost, wondering what to do next. Until now, I have not considered the improbability of what I am seeing, but the cold tease of the air around my neck, in my nose, this is real and constant. I cannot dismiss it as waking confusion.
I put my hand gently on the front door’s heavy handle and feel the sticky freeze of ice. Standing close to its solid wood panels I can sense the wide night beyond, a deeper, older cold stretched out across the land and I feel pulled towards it.
Ignoring the pull of the flesh on my fingers, I turn the key and slowly ease the heavy door open, wary of the dog, the others sleeping above me, and step out into a night bright with moon and snow.
The path that runs from the house through the brief, plain garden before the less organised ramble of the lane is covered and even with snow, it's brittle surface blue with ice. There is silence hanging from the trees along the lane, clinging to the house behind me, it is a silence full of space, the still air full of expectation, like a held breath. The cold is deeper, firmer than the sharpness in the house. I pull the zip of my hoodie closer to my chin and the hood up over my head. My feet begin to feel the coldness of the earth through the soles of my trainers and I briefly wish I had put on socks.
It is not the even path I choose, but the smaller, narrower one that leads to the side gate, the one that opens on the drive, it's slope muted by snow. The metal of the gate grabs the skin of my hands as I open it, waiting for the grating squeak of its slanting hinges. Nothing happens and the night seems to watch me as I step through the deeper snow of the lane. Only in my movement there is noise, my footsteps a muffled push, brief and dull, quickly stifled in the heavy stillness of the valley.
I have no idea where I am heading, just an urge to keep moving, to take it all in, this frozen landscape, this cold little valley, its trees climbing the steep slope, brittle with ice catching at the frozen air. Nothing moves, the moon is still and nearly full above the valleys edge. There is a rough stile set into the hedge, it's dark crumbling step glistening in the cold. I delicately cross it, into the darker path between the trees, that makes a ragged way up the hillside, winding into the silence. My breath grows heavier with the climb, clouds in the air in front of me, catching the moon’s light as it falls between the branches.
At the top of the valley, a plain little field, covered in an even, bright layer of snow and I hesitate at the tree line, unwilling to step into the wide, unprotected space. The top of the snow brittles with broken light where the gentle rolling of the land pushes from hedgerow to distant hilltop.
From the corner of my eye, over to the right, where the far edge of the field follows the final curve of the wood, a movement, made more obvious, more stark to me by the stillness that has settled heavily across everything. There is a figure moving along the tree-line, tall, steadily plodding as it breaks the crust of snow with each careful step. I cannot make it out against the dark edge of trees behind it but I can hear the soft footsteps in the snow, coming to me across this still field. I stay very still. Before too long it will reach the end of the trees, where the hill breaches and tumbles way across other fields, towards the next valley. There it will be silhouetted against the moonlit sky and I will see its shape more clearly.
I feel an ache in my throat, my chest and realise I have not let go the breath I took on first noticing this strange figure. Slowly I breathe out, trying to make no noise, trying to make no cloud of breath in the cold air. The figure has reached th
As it reaches the bare hilltop, it stops and I can see it is unnaturally tall, even though it appears to bend over, its long arms thin, almost sweeping the ground. I cannot see its head, just a dim shape above the shoulders. It stops and I am filled with a sense that it is aware of me, that it sees me, here, faltering at the hedge, that it has known I was here all along. I half expect it to gesture me towards the hilltop, to beckon with long, awkward arms. I stay where I am, although the urge to run away is strong, to run from this place, to turn and slide down into the familiarity of my valley. I cannot move, though, even though the freezing wood of the stile has numbed my fingers to the first glimmering of pain.
The figure unfolds its arms, lifting them slowly above its head. They seem to be full of joints and bends, their jutting shape reaching to wrap around the unmoving silence of the moon above us both. My heart begins to pulse in my throat and I lose all sense of the cold. The moment hangs in the silent field, amongst the branches and then the air is suddenly full of noise, a high and desolate scream pushing like a wave from the figure on the hilltop. It vibrates in my bones and fills my mouth and eyes with the shock of it and I cannot breathe. The sharpness of the air catches it and pushes it across the field and into the sky, filling everything with its desperation until I feel it pushing at me, my legs giving way to it. I feel my hand slide from the fence, the coldness of the ground as my knees sink into the snow. I cover my ears and still feel it running through my body like a wave that has caught me, pushing me out into the cold dark.
I wake to the morning light. And heat. The sheet on my bed is wrapped around my legs, my boxers have curled and twisted around my hips. I am hard with the urge to pee and my hair is wet against my forehead. Through the open window sound and noise has returned to the world – the running of the valley stream as familiar as my breath, a neighbour’s kid chattering away as a car is loaded. I lay still, disorientated, sensing my heartbeat, slow, strong, steadying itself. The summer that settles around me, around this house is bewildering after all that ice and snow, the cold, steely moonlight seems impossible now against the evidence of my working senses.
Eventually the muffled sounds of movement in the kitchen, the clatter of cupboards and drawers motivates me to get out of bed. They are so familiar they push me into the usual morning routine while my mind still turns over the intensity of… what? a dream? Such vivid, short experience, the sharpness of the cold in each breath, the rigid smell of frozen earth, the darkness of the shadows picked out in slanting moonlight on snow. The force of it felt too large, too overwhelming to me for it to be just a dream, and yet here I am, putting on shorts, a T-shirt in the early heat of a summer’s morning. I reach for my trainers, sliding my bare feet into them and feel the shock of cold, the sucking dampness and quickly my skin goose-pimples and, sharply, that scream lifts from somewhere in my subconscious to widen my eyes briefly before another shout, closer, more familiar, comes from the bottom of the stairs. "Boys! Breakfast! Come on!"
It is my mother. I hear the hall door rattle shut as she heads back to the kitchen. I leave the wet trainers on the floor, going barefoot, not wanting their dampness on me. I head to the bathroom for a pee. My hair is tousled, clinging around my ears and I ruffle it through. I can smell my body, still wrapped in the warmth of my bed. As I pass my brother’s door I knock.
"Come on Ollie, stop what you're doing, put it away and come downstairs for breakfast "
I know that will annoy him. He is a year younger than me. He hates to be reminded that I know, that I have gone ahead of him, that nothing he does is new or private to him. It doesn't matter if it's true or not, it matters that I know.
"Dan, are you going to cut the lawn today? You promised your father you would" my mother says. The emphasis on my name seems unnecessary. My father sits at the kitchen table, reading a paper. It is his way of keeping the newer aspects of the world in its place, insisting on a real paper, foregoing a tablet as if world described in print is somehow more true. However, the only paper he can get delivered now is the local one, full of stories about school productions, a farmer selling land, an incident between a car and a cyclist, lists of prizewinners at recent shows. He looks up at me and gives a brief “morning”. He says nothing about the lawn.
Mum is bustling, pots and plates are moved, drawers opened, teapots swirled. The table is already laid with cereal, juice, jams and marmalade. A mug of tea is placed in front of me as I sit.
"Where is your brother? Did you call him?" she says, doing something in the sink “Do I need to go and fetch him?" At this point, Ollie appears, still in his boxers, a rumpled T-shirt, rubbing his eyes with sleep.
Breakfast proceeds like hundreds of breakfast before it, it's normality more stark than usual, more comforting in a strange way. Over toast I negotiate my day, it's to be lawn first, then, later a swim, just before the pool closes when I know it will be quieter, the kids gone home for their tea.
CHAPTER TWO
Swim
THE WATER IN the pool is just cool enough to make my skin tighten. Its surface is beginning to settle from a day full of excited kids and groups of pensioners standing in the shallows. There are a few others in the lanes that mark off one side, steadily doing their lengths or loitering at the end of a lane, taking a few breaths. I push off from the ladder, out into the relative calm of the open water. The water feels good across my shoulders, my legs, after the heat of the day, after sweating away over the old lawnmower, struggling it around the uneven slopes and ragged corners of the lawns. I dive under feeling the water close over the top of my head, the hollow echoes and noise of the pool suddenly muted and all I hear is the rushing of my own blood. The tiles of the floor slope away to dimmer waters and I follow the darker line marking the lane, moving slowly, enjoying the feel of my body being gently stretched and flexed. Eventually I float to the surface and the noise of large, open space above me cuts back in and fills my head. I turn over onto my back and look up at the ironwork that crosses the roof. It is an old building, built when it mattered that even such functional elements as the roof girders had some flourish. Despite my goggles and poor eyesight, I can see the orderly curls and decorative edges of it all and beyond, behind the dirty glass panels, the early light of evening.
I should be starting my routine, the steady beat of laps but something holds me here in this moment of floating, letting the water lift me, easing muscle and bone, washing away the day. There must be a cloud crossing over because the light dims, barely perceptible but just enough to push my mind back to the night before. A quick chill that speaks of snow and moon runs across my chest. It makes me instinctively turn and swim towards the deep end, using the movement to break the thought, to chase away a memory of a cold hilltop, a gaunt figure, a howl.
The water in the deep end feels cooler and I sense the weight of it below me. There is no one down here and the clap and chatter of the surface has settled. The noise of the place echoes all around me and I dive into the dimmer depths, opening my eyes to search at the bottom of the pool. Faded by the darkening blue of the water, the light pushing through but giving way, something moves at the corner of my vision. I turn to look, fighting the urge to dart back to the air. There, near the deepest part, where a filter cover marks the bottom, there is a patch of dancing light like sun on the ruffled surface of a lake, a ripple of laughter in a darkened room. There must be sunlight somewhere above, breaking through the industrial glass, striking down to this patch of the pool. I move towards it, aware my breath will hold just for a short while before the deep urge to breathe overwhelms me.
The patch of light does not seem to get its source from anywhere above, there is no tell-tale beam of sun striking down to the cooler waters. It seems self-sustaining, like seeing a summer’s day through the back door of a quiet house. I am nearly above it now and I notice, as I hover there, I cast no shadow. The light seems to grow, creeping across the tiles, spreading out, gently brightening. I can make out its edges now, they seem definite, real. I reach out towards it and find I can grasp it, feeling a firm threshold. Instinctively I pull myself through, my lungs now beginning to signal their urgency and I flow through easily into colder water. There is soft light everywhere and, impossibly, above me green and blue, a surface. I kick towards it, breaking into air, letting go of my breath with a soft explosive sigh before breathing in a scent of earth and trees, the unmistakable freshness of being outside.
