List of the Lost (8 page)

“Make an exception …” she began, “in my case … and listen to me as an act of kindness, I beg of you. I offer you no harm and I am incapable of such. There is none to whom I can turn. I suffer greatly in painful silence and I speak to you, now, with servitude whilst also pleading for your understanding. I am alone and I agonize in an exasperated state. Is it within your heart to help me be at rest with the one and only thing I have ever loved?”

“What-is-it?” stuttered Ezra, his voice a half-shout. She moved a few inches closer, without removing her outstretched arm from the wall that balanced her, and Ezra now caught the full shape of her face, so frozen in dejection and want.

“Justifications are unnecessary. I am forever trying my best to speak up, so forgive me should I falter, but here it is. To the rear of the long-disused Gate Lodge on the grounds of this very property there is a heavily shaded area where stretches of sackcloth and tarred tarpaulin have for twenty full years covered out-moded garden equipment of hoe and plow and wheelbarrow and lawnmower and hedge-trimmer gadgets and bicycles that none shall ride again … all neatly blanketed by a durable covering of weather-soaked layers of sheet metal, now pinned into the ground from years of rainfall and fastening wind, undisturbed for all of twenty longer than usual years. Unseen from the road, and forgotten by all who work at this college, there is no reason for anyone to stray towards this forsaken nook with oak trees weeping down upon it and boxing it in. Beneath the mess of meshed filth and cluttered litter lies a human child, well, no longer human to others perhaps, once buried like a rabid dog, for his life could offer no continual purpose to his resolute murderer. The boy was my son, molested and butchered by a man who had enticed with such kindness, one I am able to name, now, as the very dean of this college – you know him well, whose advancing age is a problem and whose kindly kindred soul belies what lies beneath the forgiving and indulgent shell, for none could believe him capable of the cruelty he bestowed on my own child, now wrapped in vigorous sheets of cold plastic beneath rusted machinery, so deeply unjust and murdered by power maniacs ruled and owned by the sick desires of career and money, such honorable local citizens of position with their almost satanic over-valuation of a family life that they secretly despise, their coded references to my sweet boy – a boy who had nothing and knew nothing and did no one harm, and for this he was sodomized with hatred and bloodlust and bigotry … And they, and their all-powerful benevolent God, allowed my boy not another day to live. Dean Isaac might now appear timorous, but this is no reason to forgive how he behaved when he was strong.”

“What is it you want me to do?” asked Ezra in a wavering whisper, his clothes still undone, his eyes wide with some doubts that whatever it was that was happening was actually happening at all.

“Elizabeth Barbelo is my name, and my son was Noah. Before another day rushes in would you, as an act of humanity, rescue what remains of my boy and bless him with the dignity of a just burial? Only then could I find some ease. I would begin my rest, my trial ended, and the horror of these twenty years I would take as acceptable. I was nobody at all throughout my entire life … and I am recalled by no one, even now … but only the living can end my pain and release me from this terrible dark force, each day a renewed terror.”

“I will do as you ask,” said Ezra, and the woman's head fell at the weight of her tears, sobs which developed into hacking and cracking coughs as the severe and agonized face looked away with an embarrassment both shy and humble.

“In pitiless solitude I give you what thanks I can … if you would please forgive my overstated gratitude. Marooned as I am in the events of these last twenty years of tears, you will allow me to close out the dreadful past and you will allow me to rest every aching bone, to seal my son's life from womb to tomb with a dignified distinction afforded to even the most cruel and evil of beings, yet denied my dear and loving son. Your actions will forever live in my heart, as you will forever be nearest the heart. I take my first hour of slumber, for you have removed the knife from my back. Without your help my despair would see no chance of hope. I would wish upon no mother this darkest of dark shadows. I humble myself to nothing before you, for it is agonizing for a mother to have full responsibility for an outcome over which she has no control. I have sought compassionate listeners for many years. You must please forgive my unrestrained sentiment. My only prayer is that he may lie beneath a stone bearing his name … Was he not worth that, at least, instead of the evil and derelict design that befell him – discarded as worthless waste? My life with my son was modest and resigned, lowly and marked by struggle, yet savored minute by minute for our deep feelings of love and for our combined laughter, our friendship, and for that joy of natural affection … You see, he is me.”

She made the sign of the cross with an outstretched hand and in the monotheist's way of cupping the index finger from mouth to chest to left then right shoulder, throwing the gesture Ezra's way. She turned too quickly and swept out of the room as if on castors. In the hallway Ezra knew that there would be no sight of her even though any earthly creature would have still been visible … shrinking towards a shadowy beyond-the-stars exit.

“I can't forget that battered, motherly face,” cried Ezra as he sat hunched and downcast at the kitchen table. There were tears in the eyes of the boy who wouldn't cry. Around him, Eliza, Nails and Justy took up different parts of the kitchen, either standing or sitting or sloping, with their hands clasping their faces in stooping and bending despair as they listened to the full account. None would dare breathe as they sank into the deflation of Elizabeth Barbelo's visit­ation, and to the cruelty meted out to her son. Where, they wondered, was God? Any God? If Satan could be capable of so many assignations, then why wasn't God also at hand? If God had been the God of so many miracles, then why had he ceased his mission of miracles? Why halt?

“How are we meant to act on this when you can barely believe it yourself?” asked Eliza, half whine, half demonstration.

“I haven't asked you to act on anything! Every ache of this woman cried out for release … and I … will not … let her down,” Ezra now had the look of madness, “for even to contest her words would be wrong. I have the power and the means to return her child to her … wait … what am I saying?”

“But where is she now and was she even real?” shouted Eliza, mid-panic.

“Her dread was real. I can't guarantee what she was or where she came from or where she went to, and I'd be rightfully strapped to an iron bed if I began to warn people of haunted locker rooms. I've taken in too much, and I've revealed more honesty to you tonight than anyone else would feel comfortable with.”

All three instinctively enveloped Ezra with a wrap of tender loving arms.

“It's almost one o'clock,” began Ezra, a slight rocking to his body, whether of power or anger, yet also a fortification as he attempted to shake off his sadness. “We have access to the college grounds if we approach by the old coast road, and there are shovels and spades, trowels, forks in the garage, and please don't think I'll ever sleep until I at least take this woman's words to mean what they say.”

“Is that you down there, Ezra?” came the voice of Ezra's father, unseen at the top of the stairs.

“Nooooooooooo!” called back Ezra.

“Oh, good,” said his father, returning contentedly to bed.

A golf bag hid the digging equipment as the four shifted quietly into the college grounds and across to the sordid spot, shaded by a shambles of overhanging oak trees – indistinct in its permanent protective darkness. Here, the vigilantes pulled at stubborn shrubbery of bramble, brier, scrub and brush; the gnarl of knotted tree-roots and trunk of bough and branch. Thickset greenery twisted into sprigs of twigs and underbrush of stem and stalk. Heavy outhouse doors were lacquered with sprouting germination and curly grass, and climbing fern wrapped possessively around perished bicycles. Woodworm waste scattered along with reptile-like millipedes that raced across tick and larva and maggot. Earthworms wiggled annoyance at the disturbance, and termites chased for cover as spade and shovel sliced into gnat and midge territory. Magnetic force had the boys tugging and pulling and lifting with anticip­ation of dread fused with victory-lap excitement. Eliza cautiously supervised surveillance as Priorswood slept a deep valium sleep of fatted contentment, and security lights within the grounds were few and not directed towards the excavation spot where the now-disturbed earth sank and stank messily into a sloppy plop ditch that was likely and willing to swallow up any defeated posture. Ezra, Nails and Justy swung ferociously with spade to soil, heatedly seeking a verdict, deeper into the ground of soggy bog where sunlight could neither reach nor imagine, and thus the marshy mire wallowed a swampy wetness of peat bog, when suddenly a sound like the crust of dry land. Something. Arrogant assurance pushed a soaked Ezra, and Nails slipped further into the clammy clay with an even stronger impulse as the minutes ticked like seconds. Their feet and legs now covered in quicksilver slime, their demand began to push even more forcefully, punishing them as the gulch slipped into a gorge of filth now five feet in depth, as Justy's feverishly scraping trowel slid across a stretch of tarpaulin. The ice was broken, and they knew, and they knew, and they knew, and then there came a sight that further darkened the sky. They froze with a shivering fixity, making no moves, saying nothing, paralyzed by what the immediate minutes would reveal and how this would re-position their lives, and how, and what, and if, and when. Without thinking, they simply knew, at that moment when details become evidence immune to debate or argument.

“By unearthing this body we also unearth the murderer. You realize this?” said Eliza, uncharacteristically shaking.

“
Yes!
” thundered Ezra, firing his spade further into the ground, “and don't make the mistake that such bloodthirsty evil is human and worthy of any consideration … don't, don't, don't!”

Spades wading into despair, they were instantly repaid for their stubborn obstinacy. The outline of a small skeletal frame choked its way through the mud and unfolded from its straitjacket of humiliation as a shrunken but human-shaped figure of life and death, now slain remains in earthen clay, floating through the tarpaulin … condemned to extinction simply for … being there at the appointed hour, and he had been waiting for you at your mercy for twenty silent years. In stillness, the clump was unidentifiable, yet what it had been was obvious, and the mouth open widely in silent shout indicated the grisliness and brutality of its final minutes. All four witnesses cried softly, muttering invectives, their arms now wrapped about each other as they looked down upon the most distressing sight of their lives, asphyxiation in its watery grave at the ‘supreme day and inevitable hour', running out of the sands, still in death's struggle, the calling carcass of a boy not ready to succumb. Lifeless, the head is thrown back as if still shouting up and out, struggling against slaughter and slaying and all attempts at the final deathblow. The bloodbath boy lay back, like sheep, like pigs, like slaughterhouse bulls, cut into ribbons by the thrill-kill human race who are nothing without butchery and hatchets and vindictive cruelty. Spare none and take no prisoners! Depopulate and feel greatness! Murder and kill and cherish the skill. Laugh when the bull cries real tears, laugh when the sheep struggles at repeated stabs, laugh as the pigs dash their own brains out in preference to the massacre ahead … and this bloodbath boy did the same … kicking against entombment, punching against his urn of tarpaulin, grieving at his own funeral … the live burial which would later be termed at rest, when such reductions lead only to crypts and vaults and tombs without any assured rest of any kind. How very self-serving of the living to gaze upon the consigned grave spot of another and assume at rest. Coiled like packed supermarket pork, the short-term agony for the boy whose shape was now hardened mud, yet the sharp bones of his right hand stretched out across his chest as a final, hopeless shield at the end of a night of unforgiving beatings. Woven into the carcass were small loops of thorny blue denim – mother's hard-earned Christmas gift, divine love in sterile hell. In shadow, the terrifying weight was pulled to higher ground, and now the giant knots of tree-roots and human bone were clearly laid out as a nose-piercing fetid reek of what Shakespeare had felt when he wrote of “the rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril”, poor, poor Noah. Rope and leather belts of bondage clasped around the tarpaulin, and there would be no need to invest-igate further since the mechanisms of murder were all in place, and enough shock had already relieved those present of additional confirmation, as sockets empty of eyes on the thin round head of youth in decay overwhelmed our spectators. Here is the end of everything, and enough is enough. Time staggered. There came momentary pause of gentle melancholia, as if Ezra, Eliza, Nails and Justy had been taken out of themselves (or into themselves) by this misery, knowing also that none can ever escape from whatever bad deeds they have done.