Lifers

One

Seventy years ago

With an anxious hand, young Harold Robertson smeared his misted breath from the cracked glass before him; his grey-blue eyes watching the sky in uneasy silence. A silence marred solely by the Martinsville town hall bell; its ominous toll, not only warning the residents to prepare for the oncoming storm, but also reminding him of where he was and the situation he was in. And that brought back the one thought he feared most of all: just how long did he have before those same residents were going to come for him and his sister?

A weighted sigh slipped through his lips as he used that same anxious hand to flick aside hay-coloured bangs before slumping to his bed, and there he laid rigid, waiting for the inevitable, for the unthinkable, for his nightmare of nightmares to begin.

The sound of the bell, distant, though ever-present, now had competition as the noise of the growing wind started to force uninvited fingers through the crumbling window frame beside him, its ever-extending embrace, leeching his room of what little warmth it already struggled to retain.

With disquiet rising within, Harold rolled to face one of the termite-infested walls of his room, walls which, in the sixteen short years of his life, had never offered anything in the way of comfort. But comfort of any representation couldn’t have been further from his thoughts when his bedroom door flew open.

'Hal,’ called a voice.
Harold shot from his bed to see his sister standing before him. ‘Alice … Jesus, I thought you were−’

‘Read this,’ she said, a note trembling in her outstretched hand. ‘It was pushed under my door.’

With no malice of intent, Harold snatched the note, opened its single fold. ‘Did you look?’ he said, his words fast, tight.

‘What?’

‘To see who it was; did you look?’

Alice nodded. ‘Yes, but no one was there.’ She pushed her dirty grey dress into the back of her knees and sat on his bed. ‘It’s a trap isn’t it?’ she said, looking up at him. ‘It has to be.’

Harold read the note twice over, shook his head. ‘How can that be,’ he said. ‘When we’re already trapped?’

This wasn’t a trap, it was a warning, and a warning from anyone in Martinsville fell nothing short of unheard of. But they were being offered a lifeline, someone wanted them to escape, wanted them to get out of there.

The thought of it being one of their adopted parents flicked across his mind, but any truth in that would be a far-fetched reality. The DuPont’s were part of this whole nightmare, had been since Alice and he first knew them; they would never be responsible for such an unselfish act.

‘What do we do, Hal?’

Harold didn’t reply, instead, he moved to look again from the cracked window to see the distant clouds roiling, dark-grey, and flecked with lightning; just what they needed.

‘We don’t have a choice,’ he finally answered. ‘We have to act on this and we have to do it today.’

‘But what if they follow us? What do we do if they─?’

‘Look, Alice,’ he said, turning his back to the window. ‘I know you’re scared, and believe me, I’m scared too, but whoever pushed this note under your door has taken a great risk. If we don’t at least try to get away from this place it’s not just ourselves we’d be letting down.’

Alice sighed. ‘I know, but …’

‘Come here,’ he told her, pulling her up from the bed. ‘Take a look outside.’ He pointed. ‘You see those clouds? They’ll be over our heads within the hour. That will be our final chance to get away from here. If we go when the rain comes they can’t follow us, you know they can’t, you’ve seen what it does to them.’

She turned, looked up at him, her face serious, questioning. ‘And what if the clouds come but it doesn’t rain? What then?’

‘I promise you,’ he said, placing his hands on her small, child-like shoulders. ‘There’s more water in those clouds than runs through Bones Creek every day. We can do this, Alice, I know we can, but you have to believe that too.’

Again he looked at the distant storm-clouds; he was right about them … had to be.

An hour later the conditions for their escape were as close to perfect as Harold could wish for. He looked down at the rain-beaten empty streets below and an unaccustomed smile crossed his face. The DuPont’s will be in the town hall with the rest of them by now, all of them, huddled together, imprisoned by the rain, and there they would have to remain until the storm ended.

‘This is it, Alice,’ he said, a hand held out to her. ‘It’s now or never.’

Alice looked up at him, he saw fear in her eyes, but he also saw a flicker of hope, and hope was something neither of them had until that very moment. He felt her cold hand take his.

‘It’s now,’ she said.

They slipped out the back and were soon running through thick woods. The route he intended to take would have them climb steep hills, rocky hills, hills he felt sure the dogs couldn’t manage. If they made it to Tarboro Ridge and beyond they’d be home free, in which case, both had agreed never to reveal the secret of Martinsville to anyone, not because of any loyalty or devotion they may have felt for the people there; it was simpler than that, much simpler. Who, if anyone, would believe such a story?

After managing the first hill with relative ease they headed over the top and down into Bones Creek, from there the steep climb to Tarboro Ridge awaited them. The noise of water rushing through the creek brought yet another smile to Harold’s face, this one, however, much shorter-lived than the last.

He turned, looked at his sister. ‘When did the rain stop?’ he asked.

But Alice couldn’t answer that question; they’d both been too preoccupied with their plight to realise their only ally had now forsaken them, and if their absence had been discovered, a hunt for them could be well underway.

Again he placed his hands on his sister’s shoulders. He tried to sound calm, reassuring, but desperation placed a waver in his voice even he couldn’t disguise.

‘Don’t worry, Alice,’ he said. ‘We’ll make it, I prom’ His breath caught, his head shot round.

‘What is it, Hal?’

‘Shush …’

He heard them, distant but no less recognisable; the silent woods carrying their eager bays only too well. The dogs were loose and heading their way, and now they needed to move even faster.

Alice’s pace and stamina would be no match for his so he gripped her wrist and pulled her along, almost dragging her bodily through the flooded creek. Once across they headed down a narrow path that led to a derelict woodsman’s lodge. Alice pulled back, snatching from his grip.

‘Stop, rest a minute …’ she begged. ‘Please, I can’t−’

‘No. We can’t stop, Alice, and we can’t afford to rest.’

‘We can … we can hide in there.’

Harold looked at the lodge to see holes where windows had once been, its door smashed open, hanging on just one remaining hinge, and the roof, half caved in.

‘No we can’t,’ he insisted. ‘They’ll find us, and they’ll kill us. We have to keep moving.’

Again he seized her arm, again he pulled, and again they ran for their lives, all the time the dogs drawing nearer, louder, deadlier. If caught now they’d be torn to pieces; escapees, once recaptured, were never tolerated nor were they accepted back into the fold.

Halfway up that first steep climb Alice screamed as Harold lost his footing and fell. He snatched out for clumps of wet grass, moss covered rocks, anything within reach to stop his plunge or at least slow his descent toward the creek sixty feet below.

Eventually he managed a narrow tree root and his fall ended, but not without consequence. The right side of his face began to throb; he reached up, felt a gash, saw blood, lots of blood. His shoes and the ground by his feet were dotted red, and now they had a new enemy, an enemy they couldn’t evade, an enemy capable of leaving a visible trail. He thought about burying the blood, disguising its metallic aroma in the damp earth, but that would use time, too much time.

He started his ascent once again and called for Alice to keep moving, to keep climbing and make for the top, but with a shout and a defiant shake of her head, she refused. The dogs were gaining; they were at the edge of the woods and would soon break into the clearing by the creek.

Harold put more urgency into his pace as he scrambled up to where Alice waited for him. He reached for her outstretched hand but their rain-soaked fingers removed all cohesion from their grip, and once more he slipped away. Again he tried to find a foothold; some little niche to put his hand in, another tree root to grab at, but this time managed neither.

Harold bounced off the hillside a number of times before landing on his back beside the creek. He heard a shrill, high-pitched laugh coming from high above, Alice’s laugh, echoing across the valley. But that couldn’t be right; she must be calling to him, hoping he’d be okay. He wanted to call back to her, wanted to tell her to carry on and leave him there, but found no breath with which to do so.

Fifty yards away and sounding like a pack of starved wolves, the dogs thundered into the clearing. Forty yards, thirty, and as they neared ever closer, their sound along with Alice’s cries began to fade into the greyest luminosity of unconsciousness.

Harold came to with no idea how long he’d been lying there, it could have been an hour, it could have been several. One thing he felt certain of was the numbing sensation of dozens of stinging nettles on his hands and face, but like that shrill laugh he heard coming from Alice up on the hillside, this also couldn’t be right, stinging nettles died-off months ago. To his left the sound of water rushing through the creek no longer made him smile, it terrified him, terrified him with a level of fear he’d never felt before.

He pushed off the ground to sit up and expected to feel battered from his fall, but other than those painful stings, he felt nothing. He opened his eyes to see a very thin, very light rain, almost vaporous in viscosity. It was then he realised the true nature of his suffering, and in the dim light surrounding him, be it dawn or dusk, he sighted the woodsman’s lodge along the edge of the creek. He rose on unsure legs and used his hands to shield his face from the rain as he stumbled toward it.

Once inside the lodge he hoped Alice carried on, he prayed she reached Tarboro Ridge and freedom, but the likelihood of that seemed far from possible. If he’d been caught, he feared her fate would be no different.

He found the driest spot the broken roof had to offer and slumped on hind quarters into one corner of the lodge. Then, with mounting trepidation, he fingered the depression at the base of his skull to find a small, hard, speck of blood. Injection residue. He looked at his hands to find dozens of narrow holes created by the rain; each one running as deep as the bones beneath. This reminded him of the termite-infested walls of his room, and as uncomfortable as they’d always been to him; he wished to be back there now.

He touched the gash he suffered falling from the hillside to find little more than a faded scar, and now knew his fate for certain. The stinging rain, the dry speck of blood, the holes in his hands, and finally, the healed scar that should still be an open wound.

Alone, any one of these signs could mean a multitude of things, but all of them together meant only one thing.
Harold Robertson was now one of them.