Children of the Static #4
“Careful,” I said. “It’s slippery.”
“Maybe it can’t cross the water, like you said,” said Alfie, catching his breath. “You know, like vampires, a barrier.”
“That’s the plan,” I said—and leapt across the water to the island, barely keeping my balance.
Once I was across, I turned to Alfie. He was already climbing on all fours across other interconnecting rocks towards the opposite bank.
My brother struggled to keep his footing, especially since he kept glancing behind him where the forest was growing darker by the second.
“I’m OK,” he said, and promptly slipped on the mossy rock, falling into the ice-cold water.
“Alfie, no,” I screamed.
“Sally!” he cried.
And then he was gone, his small body consumed by the unrelenting force of nature, the white-water ripples swamping his final moments as he fought for his little life.
The forest was a sad place. I know that now. But after Alfie fell, whatever had been chasing us slowly retreated from the water’s edge, and for the briefest moment, I sensed the forest was, if not happy, at least content.
Here, away from the tallest pines, a copse of old oaks rested beside the raging river, the thick roots of each intertwined.
The trunk of the largest caught my eye. The ancient tree’s gnarled bark made me think of a lunatic grinning through gritted teeth.
The river continued to surge, as if Alfie’s life meant nothing at all, the water hissing with vindictive satisfaction.
***
Mum and Dad blamed me. I know they did. I saw it in their eyes. I heard it in their voices, in the silence between words. Mum blamed herself too, I think. And Dad? Dad drank. Heavily.
I remember Dad standing on the bin, using his weight to push down the rubbish sack, the beer cans crumpling under his shoes.
I remember his red-rimmed eyes every morning from then on.
The beer cans were swapped for wine boxes and eventually vodka bottles.
Dad lived fifteen years after Alfie passed, but he died before he turned fifty-two.
I still can’t get Alfie’s funeral out of my mind.
I remember Mum fretting over which shoes to wear.
I remember the rain drumming hard against the roof of Dad’s beat-up old Ford on the journey to the church.
I remember the crows perched on the cemetery’s black wrought-iron fence under grey skies.
I remember the rain disguising my tears, the sickly sweet smell of ethanol on my father’s breath, the alcohol escaping from his pores reeking, making our grief and suffering and pain something tangible.
Because there was no body. Nothing to bury.
How can you have a funeral without a body?
I seldom visit Mum these days. I know I should. But she is often oblivious to my presence. The nursing home smells bad too. Don’t they all? Flowers over shit. The air is too warm, the radiators always on, cooking old flesh and bad memories. And here there are many.
Today is the first time I’ve visited Mum in over six weeks. I find her eating a bowl of shepherd’s pie, and I wipe a clump of creamy mash from the hair on her chin she long ceased waxing.
“Where’s Alfie?” she asks.
Her mind has been like this for a long time.
In the early days, I would tell her the truth.
But not anymore. What’s worse than losing your seven-year-old child in a raging river swollen with rain?
I’ll tell you: losing him again and again, every day for the rest of your miserable life.
Pain defines her now, her pathetic existence marred by her prolapsed bowel and bed sores and looking into the mirror and being terrified by the old hag who stares back.
“He’s fine, Mum. Probably out playing somewhere.”
She smiles. “In the woods?”
I swallow hard. “Yes, in the woods.”
“That’s where I saw him,” she says. “He was out with his friends. Those little girls.”
A cold shiver creeps up my spine. I nod, playing along, but Mum narrows her eyes as if detecting my disbelief.
“You don’t believe me.”
“Of course I do.”
“I saw him,” she says, becoming agitated, pointing at her TV. “I saw him on the television.”
I know, though, the TV is broken and has been for months. I’m planning on getting her a new one for Christmas, one of those that can connect to Wi-Fi. The pretty carer walks into the room, looking young enough to make me feel every one of my forty-nine years.
“That’s right,” says the carer as if to a child. “The clever man fixed your telly, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” says Mum. “It’s still in black and white, but at least I can see my Alfie.”
I stare at Mum. She’s so old. Close to death.
I didn’t get all the shepherd’s pie. There is more on her chin.
I turn towards the TV and gaze into its flat screen where our dim reflections stare back.
Although the television is off, I can almost hear our old TV’s white noise, its hiss blaring like a raging river swollen with rain, the universe talking to itself, an unrelenting echo chamber where my childhood never ends, and the dead live on.
The End