Matthew Twelve: Chapter Seven

The light that pricked at Matthew's lids was a new light, almost scented; colours slipped up into his vision drawing his hands up to brush the sleep from the corner of his eyes. Rich, white nails brushed themselves along the skin of his cheeks and, surprising him with their alien touch.

The face that looked back from the mirror in his room was not his own, but he stood in front of the glass all the same. His hands were ever so slightly stretched, the skin taut, his nails white and new. He felt his jaw work tightly, free itself and click dryly as he worked it loose. Staring back at him was an adolescent version of his father's face, it made him cringe, stepping back, and as he did so, his lip raised, quivering with fear or anger, he wasn't quite sure. Colours stormed him again and the room swam with patterns, blemishes, stains. He turned to the window on the world outside.

The wild greens and clustered hills retreated from his gaze and the new scrutiny he regarded them with. The water was calm, slate blue, reflecting the empty openness of the sky above.

For an hour he stood at the window as the colours swam across his vision, his sense of aspect and distance playing with his mind; like the foreign texture of new clothes, his senses battled with something that was familiar, but suddenly wasn't. He felt loose in his own skin, even though now it felt that more taut and stretched. The bones in his hands seemed more prominent under the skin, almost pointed or sharpened, even ridged.

It was his birthday. His thirteenth.

Opening the bedroom door, he quietly let himself out on to the landing and slunk along to his mother's room. The room was empty but for the bright light of the morning reaching in from the west. The skin on his arms dimpled and the hairs rose.

Using the edges of the stairs and avoiding the creaks at the centre of the boards, Matthew made his way downstairs. From the second step he could see that his father was still sleeping, the tumbler's contents adding to his stained trousers.

Stepping into the embrace of the morning air, the sharp sun warmed him. A long line lit out through the grass, which was bent at an obscure angle, leaving a sunken fold in the dewy blanket. He picked out its direction, caught the lasting smell of his mother's scent and trotted down towards the creek.

Under a line of trees, the light pierced the nimble wooden edges of limbs and shifting patterns formed, fell away, swimming together across the mossy earth.

When Matthew reached the verge above the beach, he halted and scanned the sand. Soft steps, pressed into the sand, drifted down to the water's lip. He stepped up to the first, before hearing the crash and heavy pad of his father's maddened dash towards him.

Retreating to the water, Matthew fell back, step by step until the water reached his haunches. His father stood at the bank staring past him, the frenzied fury frozen there; his breath sent out puffs of steam like little signals and Matthew followed his eyes.

The upturned body of his mother sat as still as a leaf, floating in the light, wanting ever so desperately to follow the absent tug of the tide. The woman lay there uselessly and Matthew regarded her now for what she was: weak, frail and dead.

*

The body of his mother drifted around him, the face upturned and the eyes open to the open sky, occasional splashes added fresh tears to the lifeless face.

Matthew's father sank against the bank, merging with the muddy verge, his eyes locked on his wife's body. In Matthew's eyes he saw the same woman who, for the past two years, had barely the energy, or will, to nod her head, wave goodbye or greet him at the door. The woman was as mobile now as she had been in the best portion of his memory and he stepped away from her, his bare feet raking up the mud from the creek's bed as he moved away from her and his father.

As he took purchase of the far bank his father stirred, shaking his head as it snapped and stretched into a foul an inhuman shape. The nose pushed out and fell in on itself becoming a sharp-pointed muzzle and the eyes clouded over, while his fingers seemed to break and stretch into wide-spaced things that could claw and slash.

Now on the bank, Matthew raced up into the far woods, hearing the splash and suck of his father in the water behind him, then the crash and crunch as he tumbled into the wood in pursuit. He heard his father's voice, foul in his head, it left a stink there, the stink of misery and grief, muddied and gravelled.

He was getting closer, but Matthew didn't slow, he had a new-found well of energy and he wasn't prepared to slow: not yet. The road was getting closer and if he could reach it he felt the creature wouldn't follow him beyond the wood. The first day he had seen the man came back to him, he recalled that weary desperation in his eye and the bus that drew up just in time. He remembered his dog and the man that stood over the limp remains.

The road was coming into sight, but his father's heavy crash was closer; Matthew cut up a bank tearing at the earth with his outstretched hands pulling himself on and away and on towards the road. He didn't stop to look, to think, to listen, but instead fairly flew across the cold tarmac and into a car's empty wake. Behind him the wet, angry eyes of his father lurched out of the shadows and he plunged into the road. The bus struck him at an oblique angle, the creature's body flying ragdoll-like into the air almost perpendicular to the ground that it was launched from. Wheels ground against the road, the smell of melting rubber filling the air, brakes screamed into the quiet and his father's bloody body fell to the roadside.

Matthew saw it all and it became a long-treasured memory.

He buried his mother's body beside the dog, he owed her that much, but he buried her deeply.

He began to respond, on her behalf, to the letters in the post; he carried on collecting the money from her bank account as he had before, making sure the money went out for gas and electric, water and council, just as he had before. He told the doctor there was no need of a follow up and commended the surgery on their support. He informed the school that Matthew's behaviour would be addressed. And he lived that way until it was no longer necessary; he was still quiet, reclusive, but his teachers had become accustomed to this and so life, quietly, carried on in his empty house.