The White Earth (43 page)

But when all was silent and still in the House, his uncle had come creeping into William’s room, as promised. How was it that the old man could even walk? He had not risen from his bed in weeks, but somehow he was upright, a limping skeleton in a bathrobe, clinging to the wall for support. And there was no sign of weakness in his eyes, no acceptance of defeat, only the madness burning.

Now they drove through the hills. The dust raised by their passage was blown ahead of them to herald their way. The air was vibrant out there, alive with fitful winds, and a pitch black shadow had risen in the western sky, swallowing the stars. There was no lightning, no flicker of storms, but the winds told their own story. Rain was close. From time to time William tilted his head through the window and gazed upwards. The great sheet of cloud sailed steadily east, far above, and the atmosphere was pregnant with moisture, setting the skin alive, the flesh singing with expectation. But when he pulled his head back into the cabin, all he smelled was his own scent of rotting. His uncle was hunched painfully over the steering wheel, his lungs labouring as he struggled with the gears. He did not speak, and William had nothing to say to him. Their course was set.

The moon had risen and was riding above the mountains, but it was shrunken and shed no illumination. William could recognise none of the places along the track where he had walked or slept. He thought of his visions. They were the ones who had set this night’s work in motion. Were they still out there in the darkness, beyond the reach of the headlights? Did they turn as the utility drove by, their eyes gleaming with dead thoughts? Did they understand what was going to happen, and did they approve or denounce? Either way, William felt that something in the night was following them. That the shepherd had lowered his axe, and that his companion had risen from the ground, and together they walked in the utility’s wake. That the explorer had turned his weary horse, metal clanking, and was bent now on their trail. All of them coming to bear witness to this final indignity. And waiting somewhere ahead was an ancient creature without shape, silent beneath the stars.

Suddenly the track was gone and there, at the limit of the headlights, stood the willow tree, with the stone bench beneath. Beyond it a rocky shelf dropped away into blackness. Then William’s uncle switched off the engine and the lights, and the night rushed back.

The old man gasped for breath, reached for the door. ‘Bring the gear,’ he said.

William climbed out. Looking up, he saw that the ragged edge of cloud was closing upon the moon. A questing gust of wind came, and the shadow of the willow tree danced. With it muttered something that might have been thunder, vastly distant, but still there was no shimmer of lightning, only an inky darkness sweeping towards them. William shuddered, and reached into the back of the utility for the equipment. His uncle had already disappeared into the night. William hurried after him, dreading to be alone even more than he feared their purpose here. He found the old man shambling across the rocks, a wild figure with his bathrobe flapping. They had to work their way around to the far side of the water hole, where the banks were lowest.

‘Some light,’ his uncle demanded, hoarsely.

William switched on the torch, played it downwards. The dry floor of the water hole sprang into view, sand and stones and dead branches. They descended, the old man clinging to his nephew, and then crept across the stones, back under the lee of the shelf. The willow tree bowed above them, tendrils undulating in the wind. But beneath the swaying tree a hole opened at the base of the cliff, and down there nothing moved. At the brink, William aimed the flashlight, and they peered in.

White bone shone in the beam.

‘William,’ the old man moaned, clutching.‘William.’

But William didn’t answer. The rank smell of rotting had returned, as if the cave was filled with it, even though he knew that the bones were dry as the dust.

‘No one must ever know. You understand, don’t you? They must never have the proof they need. They must never take this land from me.’

William looked up at the old man’s face and saw an immeasurable misery etched there, hollow and wretched and beyond hope.

‘Give me the light, boy. It’ll have to be you. I can’t get down there.’

And as William descended into the hole, the world became a dream to him. He felt the sacks in his hands, he felt the awkward weight of the shovel, but they were meaningless things. Light shone from above, but he had forgotten about air and sky and his uncle. He was deep within the earth, surrounded by rock. He watched as his hands picked at the bones. Some of them lay loose on the sand, others were half buried, and others again crumbled at his touch. He did not allow himself to recognise them as human, not even the white domes with holes that gazed darkly, not even the rows of pebble-like teeth. He refused to count, to ever know or remember how many bones there were, or how many people they represented. He acknowledged nothing at all, working in silence and putting whatever he could recover into the sacks. When the ground was bare he heard a voice from above, telling him to dig. The shovel scraped and bit at the earth and he was hardly aware that he himself moved it. Then there were more white sticks and shards of bone, and the dream went on, darker and deeper and without end.

Finally his uncle was calling his name, telling him that it was over. The beam of light wavered and disappeared, and William rose again to blackness, dragging the sacks behind him. He was filthy. Dirt was in his hair and caked under his fingernails, as if he had clawed his way from the grave. There were no stars in the sky now, no moon. The old man was rattling the sacks, and the flashlight flickered back and forth. William could see tiny droplets of water falling in the beam, drifting slowly downwards, like snow. There were cold pinpricks on his face. He almost laughed. The rain had come too late. Too late to refill the pool and hide its secret, too late to wash him clean. He would never be clean.

His uncle was still urging him fervently — their work wasn’t done. Numbly, William took hold of the sacks and carried them back towards the utility. Was the night full of watching eyes, were his visions still with him? He felt he was one of them now, that his own ghost would eternally haunt this place, bearing its burden back and forth amidst the shadows. Then the utility was loaded, and his uncle was behind the wheel, steering them away, back around to the road. In the headlights William could see white drops floating, still only the merest mist of rain, spiralling in flurries. They sparkled on the windscreen, until his uncle swore, turned on the wipers, and the windscreen became a blur. Dizziness claimed William in the darkness, and something hot and awful was dripping from his ear.

When he looked again they were pulling into the driveway. The House rose in the headlights, a wall of ruined stone and clinging ivy, and a cold drizzle was falling.

‘Now for the finish,’ his uncle said.

The old man was dragging the sacks towards the front door, limping drunkenly. William circled around to the back of the House, his face to the sky, feeling the dirt on his skin turn into mud. He knew what his uncle was going to do, had known all along. The things they had dug up could never simply be hidden again. The threat had to be eliminated completely. He came to the woodshed, and groped about in the darkness, picking up splinters of timber from amidst the sawdust. The rain whispered on the tin roof. His arms full, he stumbled back across the yard, bent over the wood to protect it, and on through the rear entry of the House. It was dry and still inside, the warmth of the day lingering. The hallways were lightless, but he knew his way, and he knew where his uncle would be. When he came to the office he found the old man kneeling before the fireplace, stacking wood in the hearth.

‘More,’ his uncle demanded. ‘Pile it on here.’

William heaped on the wood while his uncle clutched newspapers from the piles around the room and jammed them in.

Then the old man was fumbling at a box of matches. The fire caught in moments, and flames crackled and leapt. His uncle opened the sacks and began casting their contents upon the blaze, his withered face aglow, fervid with triumph. He might have been laughing, but William heard only the fire, raging high now. The hunger of it throbbed with the pain in his head, as if the disease in him too had finally been unleashed. In a daze he raised his hand to his ear, felt something wet. He lowered his fingers and saw blood on them, black, clotted blood, shot through with white streaks of pus. It was hideous and it stank, and it had come from within him.

There was a voice at his back, crying out a question. He turned and saw Ruth, her hair tousled from sleep, her eyes wide.

‘Gone,’ John McIvor cried back, his hands full of bones. ‘You’re too late. They’re all gone. They were never here.’

Ruth stood aghast.

The old man was hurrying now, before his daughter could act. He snatched up the last bag, turned towards the flames — and his bad leg crumpled beneath him. He swayed, and in the final instant Ruth reached out for him. Then he toppled forward into the fireplace. Smoke and ash billowed into the room. Ruth screamed. She grabbed at her father’s bathrobe and pulled him back, burning wood and bones scattering everywhere. Taking up a sheaf of newspapers, she started swatting at his clothes, pounding furiously as the old man writhed.

She shouted to William. ‘Get help! Get a blanket!’

Already the flames were spreading greedily amongst the rubbish. William fled, aware that he was yelling, but not hearing the words. A blanket, he had to find a blanket. He dashed to his bedroom and pulled one from a cupboard. His mother appeared in the living room, sleepy and confused, and he shouted at her before running back. But it was such a long way, the passages twisted and turned, and then there was the doorway to the office, a fiery rectangle from which thick smoke poured. Ruth came staggering out, slapping at her own smouldering clothes. She fell to her knees, coughing uncontrollably, but William stopped short, the blanket tumbling from his hands.

A burning shape walked through the door.

It was wrapped in smoke and flame — bathrobe, pyjamas, they had all been transformed into streaming sheets. And it was silent. Or perhaps William’s hearing was stricken along with the rest of him, for he was aware of no sound. The thing came down the hallway towards him. Ruth fell away before it. The figure didn’t reel or stumble, it seemed possessed of a calm and terrible deliberation. Dark hollows among the flames suggested eyes and a mouth, and its head turned slowly, searching, just as it had been searching the first time William had seen it. Then its gaze fell upon him, and it paused, grave, and yet somehow horribly eager at the discovery. The mouth opened, a black hole, guttering smoke. In the depths of his horror William was sure that it would speak, that it would utter the question it had carried with it for so long. But instead the head tilted upwards slowly, beseeching, its question unasked and unanswered, and then something within the shape gave way.

John McIvor fell headlong at his nephew’s feet.

The roar of fire shook the House, the office wildly ablaze. William was pulled backwards suddenly, and his mother was there, pushing him further away. He saw Ruth lurch to her feet and stumble down the hall, staring in disbelief at the burning corpse of her father. And then everything descended into chaos, a blur of smoke and fire and panic. William was pushed this way and that, faces loomed through the smoke, and he was fleeing along the hallway towards the front door. He could see spurts of flame licking along the ceiling, jetting ahead of him, faster than he could run. Then he was out in the night air. It was delicious and cool upon his face, and the rain was falling softly.

For a time he was alone, standing stupefied at the bottom of the steps, gazing up at the House. Already the entire western wing seemed to be alight, flames flaring from the windows, the crumbling verandahs catching fire with a savage glee, the dead ivy igniting in a fiery wall. No rain would help, not even a deluge. Flames raced across the facade and whipped up over the roof. William heard the crack of the slate tiles as they shattered, he heard a series of explosions and knew that the ammunition in the red room was detonating in the heat. Burning debris tumbled down about him, and he retreated beyond the fountain. From the front doors his mother and Ruth emerged, supporting Mrs Griffith between them, the housekeeper white and half naked and barely recognisable. They staggered away from the building, and Mrs Griffith sank to the ground.

Then amazingly William saw that his mother was heading back towards the House. Ruth went after her, and the two women were arguing, gesticulating, and William could only watch numbly. His mother looked like a stranger to him, a madwoman streaked with ash, screaming crazily at the fire. She broke away from Ruth and dashed back through the front doors, disappearing into the smoke and glare. Ruth followed her as far as the top step, but then she hesitated, turned and came back. William saw then that his cousin’s face was livid, her hair singed, her eyebrows reduced to powder.

‘Upstairs,’ she shouted over the roar of the flames. ‘She’s gone upstairs!’

William stared. The House was swollen with fire, as if the great walls were bulging outwards. Why had his mother gone in there? Then he remembered his uncle’s bedside table, and the document the old man had hidden away in it. He remembered his mother’s joy at the news. All she had ever wanted, for herself, for her son, was contained in that one piece of paper. But the old man’s room was deep within the House, far away up the staircase and down the empty halls where the fire now walked. William’s whole world had shrunk to the single focus of the doorway. But the front of the House was ablaze from end to end, and Ruth was dragging him backwards. He felt her fear, and worse, her horror and pity. He was frantic now. His mother, where was his mother?

In answer the great House groaned, a long anguished sound, the wrenching of timber and stone. And then, with slow majesty, the blazing line of the roof began to sag inwards. For a tortured moment it held, and then thunder filled the air as it collapsed from one wing of the House to the other. Flames exploded from the windows, and a great fireball belched out through the front doors and across the garden, black with smoke and flying debris. Then only a great bonfire remained, roaring within the roofless walls, towering up into the night, and defying the rain-drenched sky.